What is an IT audit? And why does it matter?
An Information Technology audit assesses a company’s information technology infrastructure, systems, and processes.
Usually, they are conducted by an external organisation or third party, ensuring the company is adhering to best practices in IT. They can also help identify areas for improvement. Internal audits can be completed if you have adequate resources available like an internal auditor.
Understand the purpose of an IT audit
An IT audit review is essential for businesses to assess and improve their IT infrastructure.
It can help identify:
- Risks (such as cyber security)
- Identify improvements (such as business processes)
- Provide insights that can help improve decisions at all levels of the organisation
Even if you already have an IT partner, getting an external company in to look for weak spots in your IT environment makes sure you're covered from all angles.
In an IT audit, auditors evaluate your IT systems, looking for ways to improve your security, governance, and risk management.
Why IT audits are essential for businesses
Without an IT audit, you're essentially marking your own homework. You and your current IT partner are saying that you're in a good spot, without someone else double-checking the facts.
IT audits are essential for risk identification, regulatory compliance, and operational continuity.
Want to protect your data? Book your free IT audit
What's included in Techcare's free IT audit?
Comprehensive systems and infrastructure review
We'll take a look at your current hardware, software, network set-up, user access, and general IT infrastructure, hunting for weak points. Whether it's outdated, insecure, not fit for purpose, or too small for your organisation, we'll assess your current situation and review the quality and suitability.
Essentially, if you have outdated software/hardware, if your user access restrictions are non-existent, or if you've outgrown your network set-up, it's a risk to your business. This is mainly a cybersecurity risk, and worst case scenarios include putting your business on pause, or worse, business closure.
Risk, compliance, and security assessment
In order to meet ISO 27001 regulations and comply to GDPR and other regulatory standards you need to have a certain level of data security. Our audit includes vulnerability scans, security policy enforcement, and risk mitigation to ensure that security policies are enforced, not just recommended.
Actionable reporting and expert recommendations
At the end of your IT audit, you'll be presented with a structured, documented report that includes your top risks and next-step recommendations. This advice will be tailored to your unique business needs and compliance gaps.
To action the recommendations, it's likely you'll need support from an IT professional. You can either pass these findings onto the original person responsible for your IT, or our team can handle them. This will be a further discussion post-audit.
What are the benefits?
Some of the benefits of conducting an IT review include:
Improved security
By identifying potential risks and vulnerabilities in a company’s systems, an IT audit can help improve the company’s overall security.
Greater efficiency
An IT review can help identify areas where processes are inefficient or could be improved. This leads to increased efficiency and productivity within the business.
Cost savings
A review can help reduce wasted time and resource costs by identifying improvement opportunities. Additionally, it can help organisations avoid potentially costly mistakes.
Improved decision making
Providing insights into a company’s IT infrastructure and processes. This helps improve decision-making at all levels of the organisation.
Addressing your IT pain points
Struggling with security, compliance, or performance?
We've all seen it on the news; cyberattacks can take businesses out of action for weeks or more. It's not just nation-wide organisations that get targetted — businesses of all sizes fall victim to cybercrime.
So, if your systems and devices are outdated, your security controls are weak, and you haven't audited your infrastructure in a while, then you're bound to be struggling with your security, compliance and/or performance.
Compliance demonstrates to your customers that your take your (and their) security seriously. Accreditations like ISO 27001 can only be achieved with certain securuty measures in place.
And in terms of your performance, if your hardware/software is outdated then your staff aren't able to reach top efficiency, and frustrations could be climbing.
We help you stay ahead of risk
Our proactive and systematic approach to security helps businesses stay ahead of risks. For our customers, this means that cyberattacks are stopped before the customer is even aware of the threat. For businesses that we audit, it means that we're able to identify risks while they're still in early stages. Risk management mitigates threats, and should be a part of every businesses IT outlook.
Built for regulated and growing businesses
For sectors like healthcare, finance, and legal (plus other fast-growing SMEs) there are regulations aiming to protect customer data. If your systems aren't up to par, then your customer data could be leaked, leading to repercussions.
Our IT audits ensure that you're meet compliance requirements, and will be tailored to your specific industry to cover off any sector-related risks.
Why choose Techcare for your IT audit?
Cybersecurity-first approach
Cybersecurity is core to every aspect of your business, and therefore core to the audit process too. For our customers, we provide a layered approach to cybersecurity, covering businesses from every angle. We take this approach and use it for our audit process too, to check how protected your business currently is. Of course, no business can be 100% protected from cyberatattacks, but our aim is to protect businesses as much as we possibly can.
If you don't take cybersecurity seriously, your business can be severely damaged. Our cyber-first approach aims to keep your business up and running.
Partner with experts that prioritise your security
Expertise backed by real industry experience
We have experience across construction, manufacturing, finance, and legal industries, allowing us to monitor and assess common industry risks. Our audit team assesses infrastructure best practice in comparison to your set-up, which then leads into our recommendations that are always in relation to your industry needs.
Flexible, friendly, and focused on you
We always talk to you with jargon-free language — who needs all that technical talk anyway! We understand that you just want to know what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong, so that's exactly what we'll provide. We'll make sure you understand your next steps, and support you along the way.
As a growing SME, we're at that "goldilocks" stage of growth — a great size MSP to work with small businesses, medium businesses, and large corporations. So, whereas other IT businesses may be too small to support you, or too big to care, our size is just right.
Speak to a Techcare IT specialist. Book now.
What’s involved in the process?
The typical audit process includes the following steps:
Planning and scoping
The first step in the audit process is to plan and scope the engagement. We recommend reviewing a company’s network architecture, data security, disaster recovery plan, and other aspects of its IT infrastructure.
Gathering information
Once the objectives and scope of the audit have been set, the next step is to gather information. You can complete this through interviews with key personnel, document review, and observation.
Evaluating results
Once the information has been collected, you will need to evaluate against the objectives and scope of the audit. Here you can identify any risks or vulnerabilities and opportunities for improvement.
Reporting
The final step in the process is to report the audit results. This report will generally include a summary of the findings and recommendations for improvement.
What happens after your free IT audit?
Step-by-step process breakdown
The first thing that happens once you complete our "free IT audit" form, is the booking of our first meeting.
We'll have a short meeting to discuss your current pain points, and what you aim to achieve from this audit.
This is the main part of the audit process: assessing your current environment. We'll complete the audit process, looking at every aspect of your business.
After we've completed the main audit, we begin writing up your report. This audit report will document our findings, top concerns, and our recommendations.
We have a final meeting to discuss your report, ensuring you understand all aspects of it and there's an action plan in place.
Options for ongoing support
After we've presented you with our recommendations, you can either tackle the next steps yourself or we can take on the to-do list. We offer managed IT, co-managed IT alongside your internal IT department, network installation, and ongoing IT consulting.
Continue with confidence. Explore our IT support options.
Frequently asked questions: IT audits explained
What is included in a free IT audit from Techcare?
As stated above, we have an initial meeting, conduct a full IT environment audit, write up a report and summary document, and then have a final meeting to discuss the findings. You'll receive a list of what's going well, what your top risks are, and some recommendations.
How often should a business conduct an IT audit?
In our opinion, businesses should conduct an IT audit once a year. This ensures that any adaptions across the 12 months are compliant and secure, and keeps up to speed with cyber threats.
How can I prepare for an IT audit?
We'll discuss this in our first meeting. You don't need to do too much to prepare, as we're checking your natural state, not an environment that's been improved for the audit.
What industries benefit most from an IT audit?
Honestly, companies in every industry benefit from IT audits. For industries that are regulated like healthcare or law, these IT audits are essential, but all businesses should check whether they're protected and efficient.
What happens if vulnerabilities are found?
Any vulnerabilities that we find will be noted in our audit report. If we find any critical vulnerabilities or breaches, we will get in touch with you directly during the audit process.
Is the audit really free? What’s the catch?
Yes! It's completely free, from start to finish. There is no catch, but some of the companies that take part in our free audit offer use our services to act on our recommendations, which is where we get a return.
There's no pressure to use our services, but it's important to consider if your current IT partner or internal team needs any additional support to get these recommendations in place.
Who performs the audit — internal team or Techcare experts?
Our experts internally at Techcare conduct the audit. One of our engineers dives into your current infrastructure, highlighting risks and recommendations.
Interested in our free IT audit?
If you’re interested in a free, no-obligation review, complete the form and a member of the team will be in touch to listen to your problems and arrange your free IT audit.
