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IT Essentials — Computer Operations

 Services management, including change, problem, knowledge, incident, and configuration
management.
 Job scheduling and version control services.
 Network activity monitoring.
 Software license management.

Actual activities will vary. Most organizations have established a service catalog to document the
services offered. Internal audit should be aware of the IT services offered in order to assess the
policies, procedures, and operations in place and to monitor the achievement of the organization’s
objectives in relation to IT services, as well as to identify and manage any risks associated with the
offered IT services.

Help Desk Services

Typically, the intent of the IT help desk is to serve as the primary point of contact to answer
technology-related questions and assess user technology-related concerns. The modern help desk
at most of today’s organizations, however, has evolved into a combination of features — manual and
automated.

Since the advent of self-service software, organizations have automated the handling of the more
common requests, such as password resets. Other activities, such as network monitoring and
logging problems are primarily conducted by help desk personnel, otherwise known as level-one
support. These individuals perform a more sophisticated degree of triage than what is gathered
through an automated self-service tool.

Help desk personnel typically have capabilities, including the ability to reset passwords, start and
stop services, gain remote access into computers, and start/restart jobs. Activities performed by this
team should be highly monitored, and all actions performed should be thoroughly documented.

Individuals on the help desk team need to be able to assess the identity of the caller to avoid falling
victim to social engineers attempting to gain unapproved access through masquerading as someone
else.

Job Scheduling and Version Control Services

Computer systems perform a variety of tasks - from processing transactions to performing backups
and/or restores. Many of these activities must be performed at specific intervals and/or in a specific
order. Job scheduling is the means to ensuring jobs run when they are required, and failures are
identified and addressed with minimal impact to process or customer. Most organizations use
specialized software — known as job scheduler — for job scheduling.

Job scheduling is generally implemented during change or release management. Programmers
check the source code out to perform updates. Once complete, the source code is checked in. The
process of checking a source code in and out is performed using version control software.

Copyright © 2021 by The Institute of Internal Auditors, Inc. All rights reserved.