It’s easy when things are going well to ignore the annual IT health check, but that doesn’t make it any less important. Today, we’re sharing a 15-point IT infrastructure health check to keep your technology working smoothly so your business can continue operations. We’ll cover everything from zombie software licenses to expired warranties and aging hardware.
We’ll approach this in 4 phases, starting with Hardware and Asset Lifecycle.
Phase 1: Hardware and Asset Lifecycle
- 1. Warranty audit - Identify every server, firewall, and workstation. If the manufacturer’s warranty expires soon, budget for a replacement or a warranty extension now.
- 2. The 5-Year Rule - Any workstation older than five years is a productivity drain. Check the purchase dates; if it’s from 2022 or earlier, it’s time to retire it.
- 3. Battery health check - For businesses with physical offices, test your uninterruptible power supply batteries. They typically last 3 to 5 years. Don’t wait for a power surge to find out they’re dead.
- 4. Mobile device inventory - Audit the tablets and phones used for work. Ensure they are still receiving security updates from the manufacturer.
Phase 2: Software and Licensing Efficiency
- 5. The “shelfware” pruning - Review all SaaS subscriptions and identify “zombie” licenses for employees who have either left their role or for tools that are no longer in use.
- 6. Path compliance review - Ensure every device on your network is running the latest OS version. We’ve recently seen a massive spike in exploits targeting “just one version behind” software.
- 7. Cloud storage audit - Make sure you’re not paying for “terabyte” bloat. Clean out old project archives and redundant backups to lower your monthly cloud storage costs.
Phase 3: Cybersecurity and Resilience
- 8. Immutable backup test - Perform a full restore drill to prove your backups are actually immutable (uneditable) and can be restored in under 4 hours.
- 9. MFA enforcement audit - Check your logs for exceptions to make sure that 100% of your team—including leadership—is actively using multi-factor authentication.
- 10. Permission reset - Review external access on all shared drives. Remove any access for contractors or vendors whose projects have ended in the past year.
- 11. Incident response update - Verify that your emergency contact list is current. If your IT partner’s support number or your insurance agent has changed, update the physical copy in your crisis kit.
Phase 4: Strategy and Budgeting
- 12. Connectivity stress test - Is your office Internet speed still meeting the demands of your growing team? Check your bandwidth logs for “peak hour” bottlenecks, then adjust accordingly.
- 13. Cyber-insurance renewal - Review your policy requirements for cyber-insurance, remembering that most providers will require proof of endpoint detection and response. Make sure your tech stack matches your policy.
- 14. IT budget alignment - Does your IT budget reflect your business goals? If you’re planning to hire 10 people, ensure your hardware and licensing budget accounts for that growth.
- 15. The shadow IT cleanup - Ask your team what “outside’ tools they’ve used in the past year. Standardize the good ones and block the risky ones.
This checklist is not meant to create more busywork; it’s about injecting predictability into your business. By addressing these 15 points annually, you’ll eliminate emergency expenses and productivity-killing outages that derail most companies.
If this all sounds like a lot, don’t worry—that’s what we’re here for. If you want us to run our own audit of your systems, NDYNAMICS is happy to help. Learn more today by calling us at 408-927-8700.