The 80/20 Rule is a Time-Tested Way to Protect Your Network

IT security is a major pain point for all businesses in all industries. Is your organization doing a good enough job at keeping your data safe? The reality of the situation is that the majority of threats make it through the tiniest of vulnerabilities, even those that seem to be benign. By understanding a concept called the 80/20 rule, you might be able to better address your business’s network security weaknesses.

The 80/20 rule, also called the Pareto Principle, is a good way to explain the concept of cybersecurity. As reported by Investopedia, the Pareto Principle “specifies an unequal relationship between inputs and outputs. The principle states that 20 percent of the invested input is responsible for 80 percent of the results obtained. Put another way, 80 percent of consequences stem from 20 percent of the causes.”

Confused yet? Don’t be--we’ll explain further. The 80/20 rule also means that your business has a finite amount of resources available to it, and it’s your responsibility to determine where these resources are best spent. This includes analyzing your business’s network for any and all possible outlets for hacking attacks. However, it’s not always feasible to find every single way that hackers will try to access your network. Instead, what the 80/20 rule suggests is that you use your resources to find vulnerabilities in your network, and then patch the most critical of them. Furthermore, only 20 percent of vulnerabilities lead to 80 percent of the problems that businesses encounter, which increases the importance of how you spend your IT budget.

Just identifying the vulnerabilities isn’t enough--you need to prioritize the important vulnerabilities located within your infrastructure, just like how you would prioritize the important tasks on your schedule for the day. After all, if every vulnerability becomes a priority, none of them will get patched promptly, and you could potentially invest too much into minor vulnerabilities while leaving major ones unattended to.

Managed IT Force can perform a penetration test to see where your network needs to be improved, and what can be done about it. We can then remotely issue patches and apply updates to all of your mission-critical components and solutions. This is particularly important if your network is large and expansive, or if you use several different types of software. The larger your network infrastructure is, the more likely it is that you’re compromising the security of your business in at least one point.

Furthermore, we can implement what’s called a Unified Threat Management (UTM) solution, which combines several enterprise-level security solutions into one convenient package. Included are a firewall, antivirus, content filter, and spam blocking solution. With all of these security services, your systems will have the best equipment to handle the myriad of threats that are found on the Internet.

To learn more, reach out to us at 724-473-3950.