IT security processes are repeatable procedures that protect systems, data, access, networks, and incident response. The best ones do not live in someone’s head or a one-off spreadsheet. They are assigned, run, documented, and reviewed.

This IT security checklist covers eight practical workflows your team can run in Process Street: privileged password management, daily network administration, network security audits, firewall audits, VPN configuration, Apache server setup, email server security, and penetration testing.

Strong IT service management runs on repeatable processes, not heroics. This guide gives you eight free ITIL process templates you can run in Process Street right away, covering everything from incident, problem, and change management through to continual service improvement, so your team handles IT work the same reliable way every time.

ITIL, the Information Technology Infrastructure Library, is the most widely used framework for IT service management. It organizes the practices that keep IT services aligned with the needs of the business, from logging an incident to reviewing a change after it ships, and it is the backbone of first-class IT service management in most enterprises and government agencies.

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Documented processes for IT, MSPs, and system administrators are not optional. Client infrastructure depends on details: server names, router configs, vendor obligations, patch windows, escalation paths, and the small handoffs that break when they live only in someone’s head.

This post gives you seven IT process templates you can adapt for your own team: naming conventions, Cisco router setup, supplier evaluation, contract negotiation, service calls, scheduled maintenance, and patch management. Use them as MSP SOP templates, sysadmin runbooks, or starting points for standardizing recurring IT work in Process Street.

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How do you set up your servers? You probably just know how to, like it is an instinct. But is it the absolute best way to do it? Are you leaving holes in your security, or forgetting to add users that desperately need access? This pack gives sysadmins Apache, Ubuntu, proxy, FTP, Samba, and Windows setup checklists they can run and adapt.

Or, look at it another way: if you are the only one who knows your server setup methods, how are you going to train your team? Processes are a solid basis for your business expansion because the question of how to do a task is answered automatically, clearly, and consistently every time.

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Linux server security starts with hardening the basics: patching packages, reducing exposed services, tightening SSH, enforcing sane account controls, and monitoring for suspicious changes.

This Linux server hardening checklist pairs hands-on sysadmin commands with current context for cloud and VPS environments where a small missed setting can become a production incident.

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IT processes are the recurring workflows that help teams avoid server failures and client headaches by keeping technical work from becoming guesswork. They cover the things teams cannot afford to improvise: inventory, backups, server setup, incident response, helpdesk escalation, access control, and audits.

When those workflows are documented and run in Process Street, the work is easier to assign, automate, review, and prove. That matters for uptime, client trust, and workflow automation compliance, because every skipped step in IT can turn into a security issue, a support backlog, or a client headache.

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In this article, we’ll take a look at the foremost standard for information security management – ISO 27001:2013, and investigate some best practices for implementing and auditing your own ISMS.

Here is a summary of what we’ll cover in this Process Street article:

• ISO 27001: The basics & why standards are important
• Who needs ISO 27001?
• How to implement ISO 27001
• Free ISO 27001 checklist
• How to get ISO 27001 certified
• Integrating your ISMS with other ISO standards

If you just want the free checklist for implementing and auditing your ISMS, you can grab that here. Otherwise, read on!
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How do you name a new server, export config data, or fix that one really annoying bug that keeps popping up every 2nd Thursday? Well, create a runbook!

For prepared IT professionals, that information is stored in a runbook. A runbook is a set of standardized documents, references and procedures that explain common recurring IT tasks. Instead of figuring out the same problem time and time again, you can refer to your runbook for an optimal way to get the work done. What’s more, you can also delegate tasks and onboard employees more effectively if you have documentation to train them with.

Whenever you do a task, think of this quote:

“Will you remember how to do these things 6 months from now? I find myself having to re-invent a process from scratch if I haven’t done it in a few months (or sometimes just a few days!). Not only do I reinvent the process, I repeat all my old mistakes and learn from them again. What a waste of time.” — Tom Limoncelli, The Operations Report Card

In short, the less time wasted figuring out how to do a task, the better it’ll be for your business efficiency, productivity, and sanity.

This post will look at:

• The 2 types of runbook
• How to create a runbook
• Running your IT processes with Process Street
• Transfer workflow information into Pages

First, let’s look at two example runbooks to give context on what I’m going to talk about.
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Readers, I’ll let you in on a little secret…

Between you and me, I was hacked; by my best friend no less! Thankfully, it was just an irritating prank, but it served to teach me a lesson.

Despite my grandiose beliefs that I knew everything I needed to know about all things digital, I hadn’t the faintest idea about how to spot a fraudulent message from a legitimate one. And this kind of threat is one of the biggest risks businesses face today.

In 2005, 157 data breaches were reported in the U.S., with 66.9 million records exposed. From 2005-2014 there was a 500% increase in data breach frequency.

That number almost doubled in 3 years to 1,579 reported breaches in 2017.

Although data breaches have since declined (1,506 issues were reported in 2019), IBM’s 2020 Data Breach report filed a 12% rise in data breach costs over 5 years, increasing to ~$3.92 million per incident.

The growing number of breaches and associated costs seems to be consequential of continuously changing hacking methods and an expanding number of entry points (that comes from digitization).

Security audits allow organizations to set up tougher walls of safety, as an adaptive defense against data breach threats.

With this in mind, Process Street created this article as your ultimate security audit guide, with access to our free security audit checklists and processes.

We’ll be covering:

• What are security audits?
• 4 security audit checklists for preventative risk management
• Security audit best practices
• Security processes for tighter security safety

Let’s get started!
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If you’re a Systems Administrator or performing any kind of IT managed service, your daily tasks are often repetitive, complicated, and easy to forget.

Especially if you’re new to the role, things can quickly become overwhelmingly difficult to track & execute effectively. New employees have a library of techniques specific to your setup to learn, and it’s almost impossible to manually track each task in a way that’s easily accessible.

That’s why IT managed service teams worldwide use Process Street to manage & automate their daily workflows, for processes like:

• Network & server security audits
• Reviewing audit logs
• Performing daily backups
• Penetration testing
• VPN configuration
• Firewall audits

In this Process Street article, we’ll show you some examples of how our customers manage their daily Systems Administrator & IT tasks.

You’ll learn everything from how to create workflows that adapt to your current situation to automatically assigning tasks to specific people based on their role in the team.
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