Keys to Auditing Your IT Infrastructure

Your organization’s IT infrastructure is the foundation of your entire business operation, connecting your employees with the applications, data, and services they need to best serve your customers.

With so much riding on the reliability, speed, and flexibility of that IT infrastructure, it makes sense that your organization invests the time and resources into ensuring that it is running at its full potential and is agile enough to meet tomorrow’s needs.

However, in an era of limited resources, tight budgets, and increasing customer demands, organizations have to make tough decisions about where to focus their investments. One of the most effective tools that IT leaders can use to help with this prioritization process is performing an audit of their IT infrastructure.

This article will cover not only why it is important to regularly conduct IT infrastructure audits, but also share key best practices your organization can follow to get the most out of your effort.

Why is it important to audit your IT infrastructure?

There are several reasons why initiating an IT infrastructure audit could be beneficial for your organization.

Some of the more common reasons include:

• Performance: An audit can help ensure your applications, servers, databases, and other networking infrastructure are providing the speed and resources required to meet your current and peak demand.
• Security: As operations change, new services are added or removed, or patches or updates become available, organizations need to ensure that their systems are secure and accesses are controlled.
• Compliance: In order to meet regulatory requirements, infrastructure audits may need to be conducted to meet initial standards or to meet regular recertification.
• Capacity Planning: Audits play a vital role in ensuring that your organization has the computing resources, security products, business continuity support, and bandwidth capacity needed to meet planned business operations.
• Management: Ensure that your IT staff has the necessary visibility, procedures, and controls to monitor and manage the operation of your IT infrastructure.
  
  

What are the benefits of an IT infrastructure audit?

Although it can be tempting to put off conducting an IT infrastructure audit or just performing cursory checks, doing so comes at the expense of introducing risk to your operations.

By performing a thorough audit, your organization can benefit from:

• Reducing operational costs by identifying systems or services that need to be upgraded, replaced, or decommissioned
• Preventing costly downtime by identifying and resolving potential issues early
• Confirming that your IT infrastructure aligns with your security controls
• Ensuring your systems meet compliance requirements, reducing the costs of noncompliance
• Planning early for budget requests or resource needs to prepare for upcoming business needs
  
  

What are best practices for conducting an IT infrastructure audit?

When done properly with the right tools, support, and structure, IT infrastructure audits can be a productive effort for your organization.

To help make the process go as effectively and as smoothly as possible, organizations should follow these best practices:

• Have a regular schedule: Establish a schedule to perform the audits, so not only can IT staff and business functions plan accordingly, but so the efforts are built into your service management plan.
• Emphasize documentation: Thoroughly document the health, status, configuration, location, and other key data for each asset. Not only can this assist with monitoring for change over time or capacity planning, but also with troubleshooting or incident response.
• Use a vendor: A trusted vendor can bring the resources, tools, and experience needed to give your organization the peace of mind that comes with knowing your IT infrastructure audit will be comprehensive. Vendors can also bring recommendations to reduce costs or increase performance.
• Involve the business: Your IT infrastructure is there to enable your business operations, so involve representatives to collect feedback about performance issues and plan for future needs.
• Validate security, business continuity, and incident response protocols: These plans should be living documents, so ensure that they are tested and updated to reflect the reality of your business’ operating and threat environment.
  
  

Make your IT infrastructure future-proof

As IT leaders in your organization, your business relies on you and your team to ensure that your employees and customers have secure, reliable, and agile IT services. Using IT infrastructure audits is a powerful way to ensure that your technology is always ready to deliver on those expectations.

Fortunately, you don’t have to approach the management and enhancement of your IT infrastructure alone. The team at VectorUSA has a deep bench of technical experts ready to help with each phase of not only your infrastructure audit, but to be trusted advisors to help your organization’s IT be ready for the opportunities that lie ahead.

Ready to learn even more about how to future proof your IT infrastructure? Then check out our resource, Take Your Technology Business to the Next Level with Bulletproof IT Infrastructure.