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IT infrastructure audit - where is your money buried?

Very often business owners or managers do not understand why an IT audit is needed if everything works anyway. And in most cases they ask for help only once a problem has already occurred, when losses for the business are already unavoidable.

Here is a real example:

The business owner saw no need for an additional server for backing up the 1C database, and as before the backups were made manually onto one of the computers on the local network. Meanwhile the company's IT infrastructure had been looked after for many years on a contract basis by an "IT guy", the husband of one of the employees. One not very good day the company's server was attacked by ransomware. The owner came to us with the problem of getting the server running again but, unfortunately, several years of data were lost for good. To restore everything, the accounts staff spent several months manually transferring data from paper records into electronic form. Information about current contracts was lost entirely and had to be requested from counterparties. In effect, the company's work was paralysed for that whole period, which led to major financial and reputational losses.

This problem could have been avoided if the owner had looked at checking and improving the IT system in good time.

But how do you tell when an IT infrastructure audit is needed - to avoid the risk of losing information, to raise the company's efficiency and the fault tolerance of the system as a whole - if you have nothing to compare against and are not quite sure how things ought to be?

There is a simple way to find out. Answer a few questions:

• Do you have no description or logical diagram of how your IT infrastructure is built, and no idea how information is backed up?
  
• Do you want to optimise the cost of the company's information system and get effective IT support?
  
• Do you want to see the "bottlenecks" in your IT system that put your business at risk and could lead to losses and damage?
  
• Do you want to work out which IT services are most critical and where the main emphasis should be placed?
  
• Do you need to check how well your computer equipment is being maintained?
  
• Does it matter to you how satisfied your staff are with the IT services they use every day in their work, and with the quality of the system administrator's work?
  
• Are you spending significant sums on IT and want your money used rationally and effectively?
  

If you answered "Yes" to even one of these questions, a professional IT audit is simply essential. To understand which IT audit you need, let us look at the different types.

Types of IT audit. What kinds are there and which one do you need?

The results of an IT audit can vary depending on the type. We will briefly describe the types of audit and how each will be useful to your business.

• Initial survey. This is the collection of all the basic information about your IT infrastructure, how it works, the equipment and its technical condition. This work does not include analysing the findings or producing recommendations for the business owner.

• Technical audit. In the course of the work, specialists gather and organise information and provide expert recommendations on how to optimise your information infrastructure.

• An audit of business processes connected with the IT infrastructure. This is an analysis of how the business processes that involve electronics and information technology actually run. During the audit the staff responsible for each process are identified. It also establishes how well the computer equipment, components and software are maintained.

• An audit of one specific criterion. An analysis of the infrastructure from a particular angle. Specialists assess the risk of failures, the likelihood of information loss and the performance of the whole system.

• A comprehensive audit. Lets you objectively assess every aspect of how the company's IT system works.

How to choose an auditor for your company?

Let us say you have decided what answers you want to get as a result. The next question is how to choose the company that will carry out the audit.

To make the right decision, follow a few rules:

• You should only trust a company with proven experience in IT. The website should carry client testimonials. And not general phrases, but letters of recommendation from named companies, with information you can verify.

• How the potential supplier communicates with the client matters a great deal. The IT company's representative should establish what problems you want to solve and what benefits you expect from their recommendations. On the basis of that information they will propose the right audit programme for you.

• The company can give examples of how its clients' problems were solved by means of an audit.

• Another important point is confidentiality. Reputable auditors sign a non-disclosure agreement covering the information obtained during the audit. Only then does the work begin.

Acting on the findings of the IT audit

At the end of the IT audit you receive a report - and that is the tool for raising the company's productivity and reducing risk. Everything then depends on how well the company acts on the auditors' recommendations.

Two strategies are possible:

• doing it yourself (cheap, but a less effective option);

• an ongoing relationship with an IT company (more expensive, but it allows effective support of the IT infrastructure to be established).

We recommend settling on the second option. The experience of hundreds of companies shows that those who bring in experienced, highly qualified specialists get far better results.

Conclusions

An IT audit solves dozens of company problems. A stable IT infrastructure lets you cut maintenance costs, reduce the likelihood of failures and data loss, and increase staff productivity.

The company you choose for the audit determines the result and the economic effect for your business. So if you want to keep the situation under control and not worry about possible risks and losses for the business, turn to professionals to carry out of the IT infrastructure audit in Kyiv.