Auditing in the field of information technologies in an organization involves gathering, analyzing, and providing to the management of the organization information about the current state in the IT sphere, the risks that arise as a result of the operation of IT technologies, and development of recommendations to minimize these risks and improve the quality of IT subsystems functioning.
The procedure of audit (survey) of the sphere of information technologies in the company involves the collection, analysis, and provision to the management of the company of information about the current state in the IT sphere, about risks associated with «problem areas» of information subsystems, and making recommendations to mitigate these risks and improve subsystem performance.
The objectives of IT auditing may, among other things, be:
- Analysis of used IT solutions for compliance with the requirements of the company’s business; organization of information systems adequate to the tasks of business;
- Assessment of the enterprise information system for functional completeness and compliance with international standards; evaluation of the system on non-functional criteria;
- Analysis of the development and implementation of information systems; support and technical support processes;
- Estimation of the total cost of ownership and return of investments in IT;
- Analysis of problems in the information system and proposed solutions.
IT audit can be the first stage in solving problems of optimization of costs and reducing risks of IT projects when conducting an audit of the information security system.
In most cases, IT auditing is connected with the enterprise’s modernization, business expansion through mergers or acquisitions, and management personnel change.
The main benefits that an organization can get from an IT audit:
- «transparent» description of the structure of the IT service and its tasks;
- recommendations on the use of IT resources (both technological and human);
- suggestions for solving technical problems;
- recommendations for ensuring information security.
Even if an enterprise does not have the resources to implement all recommendations at the time of audit completion, having a strategic IT development plan is necessarily helpful in the long term.