Read the Security Solutions That Scale to Your Growth Plans guide to learn more about how updating security solutions can help you optimize your business.

Key to most security solutions is a move to cloud backup. The transition to cloud storage offers additional opportunities for growth. It fosters mobility, which means you can be where the business needs you to be instead of where your data is stored. It’s easier to share information and exchange ideas with strategic partners, vendors, employees who are off-site, and customers. How else can those benefits impact your operation?

• Updates strengthen your network and systems. Older systems, particularly those that are at the end of their support life cycle, are more susceptible to cyber-attacks and less capable of supporting your operations. For example, the operating system you use may affect which apps you can use and how long they’ll remain viable. “You need to know not only what they run on now, but also what the plans are to upgrade them for use with future operating systems,” noted Scott Gingold, president of Lehigh Valley Technology Company, in Leveraging Technology for Speed.
• Streamlined operations. Once the opportunities are clear, you can think about how security solution investment can pair with process improvements to address pain points that might otherwise be impediments to growth. As Puneet Gangal, founder and CEO of Aciron Consulting, Inc., noted in Process Redesign Built for Speed, it’s essential to consider human and technological elements that affect process performance.
• Positioning for future growth. The possibilities created by the cloud and broadband can serve as a springboard for discussion about how your business plan can be updated to reflect changing capabilities. Consider revisiting your business plan as you evaluate security upgrade features and their potential to serve existing business targets or make new targets more attainable.

It makes sense to develop a security upgrade strategy that takes into account not only your immediate and anticipated security needs, but also your business needs and growth objectives.