Why an IT audit should be a part of your business strategy.
As an established business manager, you’re responsible for assisting in the strategy of your organization. You most likely looked through all lines of business and began setting budgets but it’s been a few years since you took a fully comprehensive look at the use of technology through your company. Uncertainly starts to build as you wonder about unrealized costs that will soon enter your strategy and, of course, the budget. You’ve decided the best course of action is to have a tech company come and complete a review or assessment to identify various gaps and risks that you feel may exist. This article’s goal is to inform you what to expect from a technical assessment, what the impact could be, and if our team can help.
Technical assessments or audits review your company’s technological infrastructure, applications, and systems. They can produce a long document and have suggested recommendations to fill in gaps in the tech companies’ best practices. Best practices are the keyword here; each tech company will have its own set of standards, tools, and recommendations. However, there is a base review requirement for most tech companies. What you can expect at a minimum is a review of your infrastructure; servers, firewalls, switches, workstations, NAS equipment, UPS equipment, wireless access points, back up and general network map. Typical technical assessments review your Internet service provider, the connectivity, and a redundant connection. Also traditionally included is a review of cybersecurity tools like multi-factor authentication, antivirus, spam filters, and password policies. Some basic technical assessments will consist of an Active Directory check. This is where a scan identifies inactive users. Those who have accounts but haven’t logged on within a given period, typically 30 days. Some assessments also complete a dark web scan. This details user accounts that have been compromised on the dark web. Where login credentials have been shared to available databases associated with cybersecurity criminals. Finally, most technical assessments assess what type of backup is deployed on the network. What will be determined is if the backup file-based, image-based, cloud backup, what retention policies are in place, how often is data being backed up, and what’s been backed up.
The detail that a technical assessment will provide will vary from company to company. What is commonplace is the grade and type of the various physical hardware. Servers, firewalls, workstations, NAS equipment, UPS equipment, switches, wireless access points should all be commercial grade. They should all have up-to-date warranties. Servers and workstations should not have end-of-life operating systems. Other equipment should be right-sized.
What an technical audit will tell you.
The impact of going through a technical assessment is you will be able to identify the risk to your company based on your current technological environment. For example, if you have end-of-life software, this presents a significant cybersecurity vulnerability that can lead to ransomware lockouts and downtime to your business. Not having antivirus, spam filters, acceptable password policy, or multi-factor authentication deployed to the network presents a similar risk. There are different types of backups and setups that can impact the compatibility of data response time. Understanding your Internet connectivity can play a crucial and critical role in an organization’s overall productivity. Right-sizing the individual pieces of your network protects against costly maintenance or upgrades in the future.
This review will inform budget decisions for the upcoming year or years. For example, allowing informed decisions about transitioning to new technology, cloud migration, and widespread use of equipment in your organization. A technical assessment should clearly identify and evaluate what the risk is. A technical evaluation should be a part of that analysis if you’re building in corporate strategy and budget.
solut has been performing technical audits and assessments of all types and kinds for over 20 years. Our technicians and vCIO staff can clearly identify risks and gaps associated with your network and guide you through the process, helping you adapt. If you have any questions or would like to engage the solut in a technical assessment, feel free to reach out.