An IT Support Firm Can Assist Your Business with An IT Audit. Here’s How.

Setting up, managing, maintaining IT infrastructure is a complicated and extensive process for any business. The sheer number of assets that need to be maintained, the various security procedures that need to be followed, and making sure all your hardware and software are performing at peak efficiency is a daunting task for any business owner to have to undertake themselves. 

The good news is that a company does not need to handle the stress of managing all this alone. IT companies like House of I.T have extensive experience working with companies of all sizes to perform what is known as an IT audit. 

Having an IT audit performed occasionally is critical for various reasons, much of which this post will cover. If you are unaware of what is involved in an IT audit or are unsure how it can assist your business, we strongly encourage you to continue reading to see how your maximum IT potential can be reached. 

 

What is Involved in an IT Audit?

The short explanation of an IT audit is that it evaluates all the IT assets, processes, data, current effectiveness, security, and more. The primary goal of an IT audit is to identify any issues or inadequacies within an organization related to IT and determine how they can be fixed or improved upon. 

IT audits evaluate all aspects of IT and will involve looking at an organization’s entire IT infrastructure to determine what can be done to improve all operation factors. 

 

What Are the Steps in An IT Audit?

Four general steps are taken during IT Audits. Here is a brief overview of these steps and what they involve. 

Planning

Before anything specific is done, determining the scope of the business and what it involves will be the first immediate steps that will be taken. At this stage, speaking with and involving all upper management in the company will be vital, as having everyone on board who can provide insights will be crucial. 

Things done during the planning stage will involve taking an inventory of all assets within the organization. This will help provide a broad overview of the size of the company and get an idea of which devices are directly involved in using network resources. Getting a list of assets will also help determine if there is anything that can be sold or will need to be purchased. 

A company will also provide its current IT policies and procedures to the IT company to determine what is currently being done and what steps are presently being taken to mitigate risk. This will help in creating a revised policy and procedure list that can be referenced in the future. 

Studying How Everything Works

At this stage, IT professionals will focus their efforts on examining how all systems and devices work with each other. This will involve determining network speeds, the operating potential of end-user devices, verifying necessary security protocols are in place (and are working as needed), and more. 

The purpose of studying is to determine the current baseline that the company is currently operating at. Once a general idea of how things work is determined, more elaborate tests can be performed, usually from A/B testing methods. 

If an audit has already been done in the past, referencing this audit during this stage will be crucial to see what has changed since this has been done. 

Testing and Evaluating

After studies on the current operating metrics have been evaluated, performing tests will be vital to determine if the company is optimizing its environment in terms of efficiency and determine if there are any security vulnerabilities in place. 

Some security vulnerabilities that will be looked at include easy-to-guess passwords, limited or no biometric access control systems, network security policies, and more. 

Tests will be extensive, and multiple tests will need to be performed to get a clearer picture of the overall scope of operation. 

Reporting

Once all tests have been performed, the learned results will be discussed with upper management. Upon reporting the results, a recommendation will be presented. In cases where there is room for further improvement, the IT company will advise the next steps required or should be taken. This will effectively end the audit process and lead to what’s important: improving a company’s IT effectiveness. 

What to Do After an IT Audit?

An audit merely provides a guideline on what is working correctly, what can be improved, and what needs to be fixed or implemented. In other words: the entire reason for performing an audit is to know the exact steps required to optimize efficiency with one’s end-user devices, network speeds, security policies, and more. 

House of I.T can perform these audits and be able to assist in implementing any needed changes. Whether your company needs to install a gigabit passive optical network (GPON), enforce security policies and access control systems, configure enterprise-grade Wi-Fi, or anything else in-between, House of I.T has years of experience doing these things and more. 

We ensure that your business will see immediate results upon making the recommended changes from an IT audit. If you are interested in performing an IT audit and implementing changes to improve your company’s effectiveness regarding anything IT-related and general productivity, we highly encourage you to contact us to set up a consultation.