5 Quick Wins to Stabilize Your IT Environment in 30/60/90 Days

Days 0–30: Stabilize and See

Quick Win 1: Establish a clean baseline and real-time visibility

Goal: Get to a defensible baseline so you can triage faster and roll back safely.

How to get started (this week)

1. Inventory & map: Export device lists from your switching, routing, wireless, firewalls, VPN, and WAN edge. Normalize names and tags by site/role.
2. Time sync & logging: Enforce NTP on all devices; forward syslog/NetFlow/IPFIX to a central collector.
3. Backups: Turn on nightly configuration backups with automated restore tests on a small pilot, then expand.
4. Health dashboards: Stand up a single pane showing device health, link status, top talkers, and failed backups.

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What to look for

• Gaps in device/site coverage, noisy or missing telemetry, inconsistent timestamps, unmanaged config drift.

Success signals

• Consistent, time-aligned logs across domains; low duplicate/unknown devices; stable traffic baselines by site/segment.

Key metrics (track weekly)

• Monitoring coverage: % of network/security devices sending health, syslog, and flow/telemetry.
• Backup posture: % of devices with verified nightly config backups and a successful test restore in the last 7 days.
• Alert hygiene: Signal-to-noise ratio (actionable vs. total alerts), false-positive rate.
• MTTD/MTTR: Mean time to detection/resolution for P1/P2 incidents.

Targets by Day 30

• ≥ 95% device coverage (core, edge, wireless, firewalls).
• Nightly, verified config backups on ≥ 90% of devices.
• ~25% alert-noise reduction.
• ≥ 20% MTTD improvement vs. baseline.

Where Cisco can accelerate

• Cisco Meraki Dashboard or Cisco Catalyst Center for unified visibility and inventory.
• ThousandEyes for path/SaaS visibility to isolate app vs. network issues.
• SecureX for cross-domain correlation.

Outcome: Fewer surprises, faster triage, and a defensible baseline for the next phases.

Quick Win 2: Reduce avoidable outages with patching & access hardening

Goal: Eliminate the biggest, most fixable risks without disrupting the business.

How to get started (this week)

1. Patch snapshot: Pull firmware/OS versions for core, edge, WLCs, VPN, firewalls. Tag critical gaps (vendor advisories/CVEs).
2. Change window: Book a recurring weekly window; patch a small ring first, then expand.
3. Admin controls: Require MFA for all admin and remote access; remove shared accounts; enforce least-privilege RBAC.
4. Service accounts: Audit stale or over-privileged service accounts; rotate secrets.

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What to look for

• Deferred critical updates, inconsistent OS levels, missing MFA, spikes in failed privileged logins.

Success signals

• High patch compliance on critical infrastructure; universal MFA for admins; stable change windows.

Key metrics

• Patch/firmware compliance: % of critical infrastructure on vendor-recommended versions.
• MFA coverage: % of privileged/remote sessions with MFA enforced.
• Privileged auth health: Failed admin login rate; lockouts; anomalous access attempts.
• Change health: Change success rate; unplanned downtime tied to patching.

Targets by Day 30

• 100% remediation of known critical vulns on core/edge/VPN/WLCs.
• 100% MFA for admin and remote access.
• ≥ 30% reduction in failed privileged logins.
• Zero outages attributable to known, unpatched vulnerabilities.

Where Cisco can accelerate

• Cisco Duo for quick, user-friendly MFA.
• Cisco Secure Firewall best-practice policies for hardened access.
• Meraki templates to propagate consistent security settings.

Outcome: Immediate risk reduction with minimal disruption.

Days 31–60: Optimize and Layer Security

Quick Win 3: Standardize configurations & prioritize business traffic

Goal: Improve user experience and simplify ops with consistent configs and QoS.

How to get started (this month)

1. Role-based templates: Define templates for core/aggregation/access/WLAN/edge: VLANs, routing, NTP, AAA, logging.
2. QoS policies: Identify business-critical apps (voice/video/UC, ERP, EHR). Mark and police to targets; verify end-to-end.
3. Segmentation: Create clear segments for guest, IoT, OT, and corporate; tighten ACLs between them.
4. Drift control: Enable compliance checks and alerts on template deviation.

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What to look for

• Config drift across core services; missing QoS markings; flat networks without segmentation.

Success signals

• High template compliance; clean segmentation boundaries; reduced jitter/packet loss during peak hours.

Key metrics

• Template compliance: % of devices aligned to role-based standards.
• App experience: Latency, packet loss, jitter for top business apps and collaboration.
• Policy efficacy: Hit-to-miss ratio on top ACL/firewall rules; shadowed/redundant rules count.
• Change reliability: Change success rate; post-change incident rate.

Targets by Day 60

• ≥ 90% template compliance for targeted groups.
• Real-time traffic jitter < 30 ms; packet loss < 1%.
• ≥ 95% change success rate.
• ≥ 80% hit ratio on top rules; remove/merge redundant rules.

Where Cisco can accelerate

• Catalyst Center for intent-based templates & compliance.
• Meraki configuration templates for rapid standardization.
• Secure Firewall analytics to flag rule cleanup opportunities.

Outcome: Smoother performance, cleaner change windows, less fire-fighting.

Quick Win 4: Add lightweight security layers that stop threats earlier

Goal: Move defense upstream (DNS, remote access, access control) without slowing users.

How to get started (this month)

1. DNS protection: Force all egress DNS through a protected resolver; block direct-to-internet DNS.
2. Remote access posture: Enforce MFA and basic posture checks (OS version, AV running) for VPN users.
3. Access control pilot: Start 802.1X on a low-risk segment (e.g., guest/IoT) with MAC exceptions as needed.
4. Containment runbook: Document steps to isolate a host within minutes (who, how, tools) and rehearse once.

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What to look for

• Unprotected DNS, inconsistent VPN posture, gaps in MFA adoption, recurring phishing clicks, slow endpoint containment.

Success signals

• High DNS block efficacy with low false positives; posture checks enforced; rapid isolate/contain workflows.

Key metrics

• DNS defense: Malicious domain block rate/volume; % of egress using protected DNS.
• Remote access posture: VPN MFA adoption; posture check pass rate.

• User resilience: Phishing click-through rate; report rate.
• Response speed: Endpoint containment time; detection-to-isolation interval.

Targets by Day 60

• 100% egress protected by DNS-layer security.
• ≥ 95% VPN MFA adoption; posture checks on risky endpoints.
• 30–50% reduction in phishing click-through.
• Endpoint containment < 30 minutes for high-severity events.

Where Cisco can accelerate

• Cisco Umbrella (DNS-layer defense).
• Secure Client + Duo for secure, seamless remote access.
• Identity Services Engine (ISE) pilots for 802.1X and device profiling.

Outcome: Fewer incidents reaching endpoints and faster, more confident response.

Days 61–90: Prove Value and Right-Size Spend

Quick Win 5: Publish an executive scorecard and capture savings

Goal: Translate ops wins into business proof points and fund what works.

How to get started (this month)

1. Define the scorecard: Agree on 1–2 KPIs per pillar—Service Health, Experience, Financial, Operations—with clear owners.
2. Automate data pulls: Connect your monitoring/ITSM/export jobs to refresh weekly (CSV/API).
3. Savings scan: Identify overlapping tools, idle licenses, under-utilized circuits; map removal plan and dates.
4. Runbooks & drills: Document top 5 incident runbooks; conduct one tabletop + one live “fire drill.”

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What to look for

• Downward incident trends; stable/improving SLAs; measurable user experience gains; visible cost takeout with verified decommissions.

Success signals

• Leadership can see trends at a glance; finance validates realized (not just projected) savings; fewer tickets per 100 users.

Key metrics

• Service health: MTTR; incident rate trend; SLA adherence for critical services.
• Experience: Latency/jitter trends for key apps; tickets per 100 users; CSAT or resolution-sentiment.

• Financial: Circuit/license utilization; overlapping tools removed; maintenance/renewal savings; cost avoided.
• Operations: Runbooks completed; fire-drill pass rate; adherence to quarterly review cadence.

Targets by Day 90

• Publish a baselined executive scorecard with automated weekly refresh.
• ≥  25% MTTR reduction vs. Day-0 baseline.
• ≥  99.9% SLA adherence on critical services.
• ~10–15% fewer support tickets per 100 users.
• 10–15% savings from tool consolidation/right-sized licensing; decommission ≥ 1 legacy tool or circuit.
• Secure approval/funding for the next 90-day plan.

Where Cisco can accelerate

• Meraki & Catalyst telemetry for usage-based right-sizing and executive reporting.
• Platform consolidation (licensing/policy) across Cisco solutions to reduce overlap and operating cost.

Outcome: Clear proof of performance gains and cost control that builds confidence and momentum.

How The Redesign Group Helps You Move Faster

The Redesign Group delivers value with velocity through a lifecycle approach, assess, design, implement, manage. As a Cisco-focused solutions partner with nationwide reach and deep networking/security expertise, we bring proven playbooks, reference architectures, and automation that compress timelines and reduce risk. Whether you need a rapid health check, a Meraki or Catalyst optimization, or help operationalizing security layers, our team meets you where you are and gets you to measurable outcomes fast.

Next Step

Get the full 30/60/90-day plan inside the “Give Your Network a Redesign” guidebook.
Download the guidebook or request a network & security assessment to jump-start your roadmap.

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