Minimum Standards

Minimum standards are essential to ensure that your technology and infrastructure is reliable, secure, and meets your business needs. By adhering to these standards, you can help prevent costly downtime and protect your business from cybersecurity threats. Additionally, having a consistent technology environment across all devices and systems can improve productivity, simplify support, and make it easier to manage your technology resources. These minimum standards provide a baseline for your technology environment and ensure that all equipment meets basic requirements for performance, security, and compatibility.

Desktop PCs and Laptops

• Must be genuine, licensed, and vendor-supported
• Running Windows 11 Pro or later
• Have an x64 compatible processor
• With Microsoft operating systems have most recent critical updates installed
• Have a minimum of 16GB RAM and 250GB storage
• Less than 4 years old

Servers

• Have genuine, licensed, and vendor-supported software
• If Microsoft operating systems, running Windows Server 2019 or later
• If Microsoft operating systems, have most recent Microsoft service packs and critical updates installed
• If Linux, must be an actively supported or LTS release that receives current security updates
• Have a minimum 25% free space on all drives currently installed and partitioned
• Be under manufacturer warranty or under maintenance contract with the manufacturer
• Less than 6 years old
• Connected to adequate battery backup / UPS

Infrastructure

• All network equipment and firewalls must be enterprise-grade
• All ports must be at least Gigabit speed (1000FDX)
• Less than 6 years old
• Connected to adequate battery backup / UPS

General

• The environment must have a currently licensed, up-to-date, and vendor-supported end-point protection solution on all servers, desktops, notebooks/laptops
• Currently licensed, up-to-date, and vendor-supported anti-spam solution
• Currently licensed, and vendor-supported server or network-based backup solution
• Currently licensed, and vendor-supported Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) or Unified Threat Management firewall (UTM) firewall between the internal network and the internet
• All wireless data traffic in the environment must be securely encrypted with WPA2 or greater
• All wireless traffic segmented public vs. private
• All Line of Business applications and third-party hardware must have active vendor support during all hours of business
• Internet connection must be on a business plan and have a static public IP with a minimum of 3Mbps upload speed