WHY PERFORM AN “IT INFRASTRUCTURE” AUDIT?

If you are leading a small or medium enterprise business, you might have had these comments from your team:

• “System performance problems are affecting our productivity”
• “Can we get more out of the IT assets we own?”
• “How can our technology help us execute decisions faster?”

It can be challenging for you to keep track of what you have and how it’s working. This is where a critical IT infrastructure audit can be helpful for your organization.
A comprehensive audit generally covers the following aspects

• Are the servers installed properly configured for both security and efficiency;
• Identifying hardware and system software issues that are impacting productivity;
• Identifying reasons as to why outages and downtime are occurring;
• Efficacy of back-ups and confirmation with respect to the adequacy of how these are managed and monitored;
• Adequacy of security measures in dealing with viruses, spyware, firewalls, and internet intrusions; and
• Software licensing and compliance.

What do we recommend?

In essence an audit is a snapshot of the current capabilities of your IT infrastructure and a review of factors that may be affecting the performance of IT and your business as a whole.

Therefore an outcome of the Audit should cover the following:

1. Asset listing of your hardware to support budgeting, planning and management;
2. A list of software installed on each system;
3. The version of operating system, security, and patching done;
4. Appropriateness of the hardware and impact on performance;
5. Server hardware: appropriateness, performance, and levels of redundancy;
6. Analysis of the network design;
7. Analysis of the security environment (software, policies and procedures); and
8. Back-up systems: hardware, software, data management, and disaster recovery planning.

These are important considerations to ensure that your businesses IT infrastructure improves productivity and minimizes risks for your business.

Critical infrastructure audits can run concurrently with your day-to-day operations, and at the end of the review, IT teams can gain a clear idea of the state of their systems. An audit may reveal that in actuality, you’re only getting a portion of the performance you should be seeing with the systems you have in place.

If you are considering a critical infrastructure audit on your IT systems, do write to us at dm@precisionit.co.in