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Because security should run through your IT like the lettering on a stick of blackpool rock, a security audit may reveal plenty of areas for improvement in your IT infrastructure. There are several frameworks you can choose to perform your IT audit. One of the most popular is the ISO 27002 standard (previously known as ISO 17799). This is a code of practice that covers the following areas:

• Structure
• Risk Assessment and Treatment
• Security Policy
• Organization of Information Security
• Asset Management
• Human Resources Security
• Physical Security
• Communications and Operations Management
• Access Control
• Information Systems Acquisition, Development, Maintenance
• Information Security Incident management
• Business Continuity
• Compliance

By assessing each of these areas in turn and by measuring your own arrangements against the code of practice, deficiencies in your IT infrastructure are revealed. Fixing those deficiencies will result in a more efficient, stable IT platform for your business.

If you would like to arrange an audit of your own IT infrastructure, please get in touch.

Tags: IT, audit, ISO 27002, ISO 17799

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If your company uses Information Technology, you need an IT Operations Schedule. The purpose of the schedule is to ensure that the most important tasks are not forgotten. Another reason you need a written schedule it that it helps you to understand what you need to manage. Writing down tasks also clears up areas of doubt when deciding who should be responsible for the activities.

If your IT is really complicated then you might wish to consider a dedicated scheduling package. However for many small and medium sized companies this would be overkill. Most email programs have a very good calendar with the ability to set recurring appointments and tasks with reminders. These are ideal to create and manage an IT operations schedule.

KDR EBusiness Limited offer IT Management Services designed to reduce complexity, improve costs and ensure that your Information Technology services support your business goals.

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If you were to total up all the disk storage you have available in your computer room, you might be surprised at the total. We conducted this exercise with one of the larger Isle of Man based companies and we found that they had 300% more capacity than they really needed.
We believe this to be a typical picture amongst companies that have no formal storage management plan in place. All that extra capacity costs money, takes up power and produces heat that must be dealt with. By examining how much storage you really need, and by creating a storage management plan, you can consolidate your requirements and save money.

Backups are another area where savings can be found. Over time, as new servers are added, more backup units appear, each incompatible with the last. This results in a large amount of expensive backup tapes requiring off-site storage. By considering your storage and backup as an integrated pair you can balance your requirements, save money and ensure that recovery from failure is much easier to perform.

Related Article: Cost Saving Idea: Reduce Server Count

Tags: disk storage, Isle of Man, storage management, Backups, recovery

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The role of the IT manager is dependent on several factors, with the top three being organisation size, industry sector, and geographic distribution. The detailed IT Managers checklist for each of these would be widely different, but for the purposes of this article I would like to concentrate on the common threads that should appear in every IT Managers checklist.

As an ex IT manager of a small/medium sized enterprise (<250 staff, finance industry, 3 locations) my own checklist had four items at the top level, and I think that this was a good starting point which helped me to prioritise and concentrate our efforts.

• Legal/Statutory
• Operational/Support
• Projects/Development
• Strategic

Legal/Statutory
These are the must do things that ensures your organisation stays on the right side of the law. Within the IT world there are an ever increasing number of legal and statutory requirements. A good IT manager should have a working knowledge of them and know how they might affect the company they work for.

Operational/Support
Operational encompasses the scheduled and regular tasks that should be done in order to maintain a stable and available set of IT services. Support deals with services that are not working properly.

Project/Development
Projects are intended to achieve a specific benefit or business objective, and most IT development, coding, infrastructure improvements, etc., would fit within this category.

Strategic
Here I would include IT finance and budgeting. Work on policies and procedures, awareness of emerging technologies. But most importantly the IT manager should understand the business direction and drivers, and determine how IT can assist in the success of the company.

As an IT manager this helped me to keep the big picture in mind. But what about you, and bearing in mind the high level, is there anything else you would add to this checklist?

Later in Part #2 we’ll put a little more flesh on the bones.

Tags: IT manager, checklist

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Long established companies often end up with numbers of legacy systems running on lots of different servers. The management of these servers ends up becoming more expensive than necessary.

When Windows NT was the operating system of choice for many IT departments, Microsoft recommended that one server per service was the best approach. This mindset is still in evidence within many organisations today.

Now that there are robust Virtualisation technologies, IT departments need to re-examine their approach. Virtualisation allows multiple servers to run on a single box. The right strategy can produce significant savings on maintenenance costs and disaster recovery charges, as well as reductions in floor space, power and air-conditioning requirements.

You can also benefit from improved systems performance, and less downtime. If it’s not already part of your planning cycle, you should review your server requirements at least once per year.

Related Article: Cost saving idea: Storage and Backup

Tags: legacy, management, Microsoft, Virtualisation, strategy, maintenenance, disaster recovery

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