These applications form the beating heart of various business processes, from inventory management and customer relationship management to financial transactions and operational monitoring. In short: modern business operations. We delve deeper into strategies and best practices to effectively tackle these challenges and ensure the continuity of your business. Are you reading along?
The security of business-critical applications
As a company you must simplement increasingly strict security measures to protect its own networks and information systems. This includes measures such as risk assessments, Incident Response procedures (IR), and supply chain security. Certainly the expansion of the NIS2 guidelines (Network and Information Security Directive 2) has significant consequences for companies that use business-critical web applications in their daily activities. This guideline is a revision of the original NIS guideline and is intended to: cyber resilience of networks and information systems within the EU. Failure to comply with the NIS2 guideline poses significant financial, operational and legal risks, in addition to the potential damage to reputation and stakeholder trust.
For web applications, this means implementing robust security protocols to minimize vulnerabilities. Business critical applications often contain sensitive data that needs to be protected against threats and data leaks. That includes implementing strong access controls, encryption and regular security audits.
Access controls | Access controls ensure that only authorized individuals have access to your company’s critical information. The addition of encryption ensures that certain sensitive data becomes unreadable to unauthorized persons.
Reporting of incidents | NIS2 requires companies to report serious security incidents to the relevant authorities within 24 hours of discovery. This means that companies must set up systems for rapid detection, analysis and reporting of incidents that affect business-critical web applications.
Integrated approach to cyber security | Companies must take an integrated approach to cybersecurity, taking both technical and organizational measures. This means that companies must invest not only in technology but also in policies, procedures and culture change.
Regular security audits | These are essential to identify and fix vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. In addition, it is important to stay up to date with the latest security patches and updates to protect against the latest threats.
By taking a layered approach to security, you as an IT manager can guarantee the integrity, confidentiality and availability of business-critical applications. The continuity and reliability of the business processes is then assured.
Maintenance and updates of business-critical applications
Regular maintenance and updates are necessary to keep the applications functioning smoothly and securely. Remember, this must be done properly and with minimal disruption to business operations.
Establishing effective disaster recovery and business continuity plans is crucial for business-critical applications so that the business can quickly recover from a disaster. These plans should be tested and updated regularly to ensure they are effective when needed. A Service Level Agreement (SLA) plays a key role in this by making clear agreements about expected availability, response times and recovery procedures. Within SIENN’s approach, we create a high level of involvement with our SLAs. Adhering to SLAs is essential to maintain trust and ensure that business-critical applications always remain operational. As a business grows, its applications must be able to scale without performance issues. What are the requirements for this? Think about scalable architecture and investment in additional resources. Schedule an appointment with us without obligation to see how this is set up within your organization.
Compliance and regulations in relation to business-critical applications
Compliance is a continuous process. It depends on the sector, but there may be strict regulations surrounding the use of IT systems and data. For industries such as healthcare, financial services and energy, there are specific laws and standards that these companies must follow to ensure the security and privacy of sensitive information. Consider regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA and SOX. The most important requirements in these types of regulations quickly revolve around:
- Rights of those involved: Companies must comply with requests from individuals about their data, such as the right to access, correct, delete and transfer this data.
- Data security: there must be technical and organizational measures to protect personal data.
- Data minimization: only necessary data may be collected and processed.
- Privacy by Design: Security and privacy must be integrated into the design of systems and processes from the start.
- Notification obligation: Security breaches must be reported to supervisory authorities within 72 hours.
Business-critical applications must be designed and managed to comply with these regulations. This requires thorough knowledge of the relevant rules and careful implementation of compliance procedures and technologies. It may be necessary to implement extensive logging and monitoring. This way, a detailed audit trail is available for regulatory inspection.
While meeting regulations and compliance requires a significant investment of time and resources, it is essential to prevent issues surrounding business-critical applications.
Securing integrations
Business-critical applications often need to integrate with other systems within and outside the company. Ensuring compatibility and managing these integrations can be complex. Systems such as ERP, CRM and specialized industry applications must work together seamlessly to ensure business processes run efficiently and data are consistent. This requires careful planning and robust technical solutions.
SIENN offers many integration options that help companies tackle these challenges together. You can read here how SIENN can help you, among other things.
API-management | SIENN provides comprehensive API management solutions that help companies design, secure, monitor and manage their APIs. This makes it easier for applications to communicate with each other and exchange data, regardless of the underlying platform.
Secure integration | Security is a top priority during integrations. SIENN ensures that all data transmissions are secured through encryption and other security measures. This helps to protect sensitive company information against unauthorized access and data leaks.
Through these integration options, SIENN helps companies to make their business-critical applications work seamlessly with other systems. This improves operational efficiency, increases data integrity and creates a responsive IT environment that can respond to changing business needs.
Performance monitoring and optimization
Constantly monitoring performance is crucial to identifying and addressing potential issues early to keep business-critical applications running smoothly. Proactive monitoring helps detect anomalies, optimize resource usage and maintaining optimal system operation. A Service Level Agreement (SLA) plays an important role in this by establishing specific performance standards and response times.
Business-critical applications and the primary process
Business-critical applications are inextricably linked to the primary process of an organization. Whether managing financial transactions, optimizing the supply chain or analyzing business data, business-critical applications are essential to keeping daily operations running smoothly.
When managing business-critical applications that have a major impact on an organization’s primary process, there are several important points to consider. These points of attention help to ensure the continuity, security and efficiency of these applications. Here are the most important aspects to pay attention to:
- Availability and reliability
Provide redundant systems and infrastructure to minimize downtime. This can be done by using failover clusters, load balancing and geographically distributed data centers. Develop and test a disaster recovery plan. This plan should include clear procedures for recovering applications and data after a disaster. - Performance and scalability
Implement performance monitoring tools to continuously monitor application performance and identify bottlenecks early. Design applications and infrastructure that can easily scale to meet growing demands. This can be done by using cloud solutions and containerization (such as Docker and Kubernetes). - Integration and compatibility
Use API management tools to facilitate and manage integration with other systems. Ensure APIs are well documented and secured. Consider application compatibility with different operating systems, browsers and devices. - Ease of use and training
User Experience (UX) is always a high priority for us. Design applications with the end user in mind to increase productivity and satisfaction. - Cost management
Monitor and manage the costs of maintenance and operational aspects of the applications. This can be done through cost-efficient cloud solutions and optimizing resource use. Perform a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis to get a complete picture of all costs associated with the applications, including hidden and indirect costs.
How future-proof are your business-critical applications?
That is precisely why these can make your organization vulnerable. It is important that you pay attention to three elements: availability, management and security. Do you need help with your business-critical applications? Contact SIENN!
