If you’ve ever built a company from scratch, you know that the process may be extremely natural. Everything rarely goes according to plan, but a successful business is still successful, regardless of how you got there. As a result, many of your company’s procedures could be quite wasteful – particularly concerning IT. If you keep adding computers here and there and adding people as needed, you can spend more than you should or even have redundant hardware or software. You can streamline your business technology to support future growth by identifying what is working, removing what isn’t, and doing an IT support audit.

What is an IT support audit?

An IT support audit is a smaller portion of a bigger IT audit that focuses solely on how your company handles IT issues. An IT support audit will show how your company handles and, more crucially, resolve these issues for your personnel, from network latency difficulties to workstation performance concerns. An important area of focus for an IT support audit is your company’s cyber security measures, which can help you respond to queries like “How am I protecting my remote workforce from cyberattacks when using their home networks?” and “What would happen if the business fell victim to ransomware or other cybercrime?”

The benefits of IT support auditing

Carrying out an IT support audit isn’t necessarily something you had on your to-do list for the year, but it can be a real game changer – especially if you’ve never formalised your IT processes. You still might be asking ‘Why?’, so here are the biggest benefits of performing an audit of your IT systems and support processes:

• Improve your knowledge of your current setup. An audit will show you everything you have in place, even if you don’t update your IT systems.
• Fix current IT issues. Tracing each step of your IT procedures will reveal any underlying problems evading you and possibly creating damage that isn’t immediately visible.
• Defend your company against upcoming online attacks. The IT support auditing method strongly emphasises locating potential cyber hazard hotspots for your company. Finding these now will safeguard your company in the future.

The components of an effective IT support audit

After thoroughly understanding the justification for an IT support audit, let’s look at how they operate. Although not mandatory, the components discussed here should be considered when preparing your IT audit. The specific procedures needed for an audit will be particular to your company; however, the following suggestions should help you focus your planning:

Examining (and recording) your IT troubleshooting procedures

What do your staff members do if they require assistance with hardware or software problems? One good recommendation for auditing these support paths is to create a fictitious support ticket and follow the issue resolution path. Record each step so you may go back and evaluate its effectiveness after the audit is over.

Local and cloud-based software auditing

Software is one of the main attack vectors, so any full IT support audit should always involve a careful examination of all software. All work-related software should be reviewed, including locally installed programmes and cloud-based programs like Microsoft 365 that are set up on your employees’ laptops and workstations.

Analyses and comparisons of peers

Maintaining your company’s security from cyberattacks typically requires learning how your rivals carry out similar activities. An auditor may decide to do peer analysis as part of a thorough IT support audit to learn industry best practices and make sure your business is keeping up.

Permissions, user groups, and policies

A technological setup that reflects the organisation supports any reliable IT infrastructure. Depending on your specific arrangement, you might manage your users using a platform like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 (Azure Active Directory). You can use these systems to add/remove users, establish user groups, define file access rights, and more. A thorough examination of user authorisation management is crucial when conducting an IT support audit.