Network Audit Checklist
What information should be stored in the network audit checklist? How that checklist should be constructed?
Except the others, a network audit checklist should contain detailed information about the computers and network devices connected to the corporate network being audited. In most cases it is impossible to collect this inventory information "by hands" and completely impossible to maintain it in the up-to-date state permanently if you manage a network conttecting at least 50 computers.
This means that you should have a tool that will automatically scan your network for computers and devices connected and collect all possible information about each individual device found. For Windows computers, it should be processor, motherboard, memory and hard disks information, the list of the software installed and separatelly - computer scurity settings, like antivirus software name and version or firewall and Windows Update settings.
For network devices, such tool should record the name, model and type of the device. Additionally, it should record the device properties - at least those properties that are accessible via the SNMP protocol and, so, could be retrieved automatically. This could be a network printer type, or network router firmware version, or network storage capacity - well, there are different types of devices connected to a corporate network and many settings of these devices might be useful to include them into the network audit checklist.
Please check the Asset Tracker for Networks software and find out how does this tool will help you to complete the network audit checklist for your organization.
Next article: Network Audit Report