How (and Why) to Do a Technology Audit?

Finding a way to stress-test your tech is critical to the IT process. You need to test your tech regularly. In this post, you'll learn why you should do a regular audit, and how to do the inspection yourself.

Why should you do a Tech Audit?

Much like how you do maintenance on a car to prevent breaking down in the middle of the freeway, a tech audit can help keep your business running smoothly. Here are specific reasons to do a regular tech audit.

You can score your systems and their parts

By scoring your system, you can:

• See what is and isn’t in your company
• Know for sure how much volume or activity your systems can handle
• See which components are likely to fail in the future

You can find and avoid bottlenecks in your systems

Every system has a weak point. This audit can help you find these points and make them more secure (or at least identify them so you can fix them when they break.)

You will prevent unnecessary IT expenses

With benchmarking data, you can prevent wasteful decisions. A vendor may insist that you need to spend money to upgrade a particular component, but when you test your system, you can determine if they’re telling the truth or are trying to extract money from you.

How to do a Tech Audit?

Now that you know why it’s a good idea to do a tech audit, we’ll cover how to complete a tech audit, step by step.

Do a full sweep of your network and check every device you have connected to it.

Check these areas in your network:

• Sweep for malware.
• Make sure you have security software installed and operating correctly.
• Test your firewall.
• Test physical security to make sure no one can breach it from outside.
• Make sure servers are mounted, redundantly powered, and properly cooled.

Audit your software.

Audit every application your company uses.

• Check receipts, license agreements, and version numbers; use the most up-to-date version of every application.
• Remove non-business software.
• Remove software that is no longer being produced and updated, and look for alternatives.
• Check for software your company is missing and may need. Look for alternatives that you’d like your management team to consider.

Audit your hardware.

Check your hardware to make sure your business is running securely and efficiently.

• Make sure your team is using the hardware correctly for every task.
• Ensure your computers and devices are using non-proprietary platforms to ensure maximum compatibility and reduce costs.
• Log every piece of equipment (including its location, model number, serial number, purchase date, copy of its receipt, and the person responsible for the device.)

Audit your backup systems.

Make sure you’re ready to bounce back from disaster.

• Make sure you’re using an up-to-date storage medium.
• Store your backup data in an off-site location.
• Ensure these storage mediums can verify your backups.
• Make the system retrieval and restoration process as simple as possible.

Do a Technology Audit right away to save downtime and money for Your business.

Take these quick steps regularly to make sure your business tech is running at peak performance. Just a few seconds of double-checking your systems can save your business a lot of future headaches. Contact us today for a free network assessment.