We're going to be having an audit on our school network sometime in the next couple of months. This is the first time that I've ever had this, so does anyone have any tips?
Also: Will they only be looking at software licenses, or will they include things like music and video files, too?
Cheers all.
Hi Fafster,
It's not something I've ever had done either so can't really offer any advice.
You mention "they" in your original post though. Can I ask who "They" are?
Yes who are "they"?Originally Posted by Iain.Faulkner
Is this a helpful "service" or a we are out to fine you "audit".
From they way it's been put to me, it sounded like the latter. Though the person in contact with the head was from the LA, so I don't actually know....
The head isn't here right now, she's on a course, so I can't ask for clarification.
In that case its time to run a pre emptive audit of whats installed and what you have licences for. If your school is like mine then you are looking at a long hard slog. Though its only one image for the entire school.
How many pc's do you have?
Who own's the hardware and software your school of the LA? if it's your school you don't have to let anyone in the door to do this.
What is their end goal for doing this?
Ben
We own everything apart from the servers and the core switches.
I'm looking after roughly 250 machines, plus 15 laptops. Spiceworks has been on the network for over a year, so it has a pretty comprehensive list of everything. I just need to go through it and separate the free stuff from the paid stuff.
Our LA has just audited our school. This was done by the financial services team but also included IT.
A six page document was completed covering all sorts - licencing, portable media, password policies, system security, web filtering and more.
The purpose of the audit was to assess the financial risk of the school for insurance reasons.
In effect the auditors have no power and can only recommend actions to take to decrease our risk.
We also had this done by the LEA. They wanted us to make some pretty dramatic changes and it felt like we could not say no. One particular thing they pulled us for was wireless encryption and they stating we should be using radius. We set this up but could never get it to worlk as good as the normal way so we abondoned radius and went back to WEP. If it is anything like our LEA they will want to see MS and antivirus licenses, they did not bother with any curriculum software.
We have just gone though the same procedure.
Basically they go though a long list of items, but they give the school a list of what they will be checking and so ask for this. I knew what they were going to check 2 months in advance.
Will they only be looking at software licenses, or will they include things like music and video files, too?
Yes to licences, not music or video files. So if you have copyright material on the network unless you show them it they wont look for it.
My software audit started as access database through manual checking of licenses (basically going through 100s of cds\dvds in our office and hunting down department heads) and has now evolved into using lansweeper to track licensing on our pcs.
We are lucky that the vast majority of software in our school has a site license.
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