Do you know what’s connected to your network? If not, you should! Auditing your network and creating an inventory of your IT assets catalogs all devices connected to your network including PCs, laptops, printers, routers and switches. In some cases, assets discovered may even be unauthorized.
By scanning and discovering all connected devices, your IT team can quickly perform a hardware and software audit. This helps ensure compliance with network policy, software licensing compliance, and compliance with industry regulatory requirements, such as, HIPPA. What’s more, having asset data cataloged, including hardware and software profiles, helps remote support technicians troubleshoot when things go wrong.
What can you do with network audit data?
- Check your firewall’s security settings to make sure you are protected from the latest hacker attacks, worms, and viruses.
- Scan and remove spyware that is secretly stealing your company’s bandwidth, jeopardizing the speed of your computer system, and embezzling confidential information about you, your employees, and your business.
- Check your network’s backup system to ensure it is working properly and accurately backing up all of the critical files and information you never want to lose.
- Verify that you have the most up-to-date security patches installed properly; miss one critical update and you’re a “sitting duck.”
- Identify unstable PCs that may operate slowly.
- Search for all items meeting a criteria in summary and detail. For example, to determine how many machines use windows 7 with 4 megs of RAM to see if they are eligible for an O/S migration.
- Determine which devices may be out of software license compliance.
- Summarize warranty information for which devices are covered and which devices are not.
- Create an asset register to support financial audits of fixed assets.
- Create compliance reports including logs of O/S updates, anti-virus definition updates and backup.
With the many benefits of auditing your network, why wait? A network audit and asset inventory should be part of your proactive and routine managed service program. Contact your service provider today to insure that your network is secure.
