Last night we talked about a variety of storage components and how they all technically worked at a very detailed level. While you may never work in a factory that manufactures hard drives, as an IT Auditor why do you think it is important to understand and appreciate the variety of storage components that exist in an organization?
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Shuyue Ding says
It is important because, During my last internship, my boss store everything in Google Drive. She also shares the company folder with any new interns and employees. Now I am thinking about it, it’s probably not a good idea to do so because I understand that means hundreds and thousands of copies of her company’s information, which increase the likelihood of hackers attack. After the storage class, I would probably suggest her stop doing that and start to use RAID-1/RAID-5 to store data, and join company’s computers together in order to share information pre department respectively.
Patrick J. Wasson says
Thank you for your comment! It is important to remember that storing items in the cloud often means you don’t know exactly where your documents are!
Ryu Takatsuki says
For an IT auditor, understanding the variety of storage component that exists in an organization will help us to know more about its IT system. When auditors go to their client company to audit the IT system, they have to know what kinds of things that they check. As you mentioned in the class, if we don’t open the disk management we wouldn’t know how many disks they actually have in their computer. Moreover, if we notice that the company doesn’t have a backup plan, it could put the company in a high-risk environment. Since when the disk is broken, they will not have backup data to use.
Patrick J. Wasson says
Thank you for your comment!!
Yuqing Tang says
In fact, I didn’t notice the importance of learning the hard drives before, but after the lecture and our actual practice from last week, I realized that there are many ways to hide information in a computer that are not easily to be discovered. The disk is the very key component of a physical computer because everything on the computer must be saved on the disks. And the biggest lesson I learned is that if the disks are set offline, we cannot see them on the regular panel. Any “bad” information can just be saved on the hidden disks, which I never thought it before. Therefore, I think it’s very important for us to learn how the computers operate in order to find out all data we need and audit all materials on the computer.
Patrick J. Wasson says
Thank you for your comment!!
Sarah Puffen says
Understanding storage components within a digital or physical system is important to an IT Auditor, as it is where a company saves the majority of its vital information. It is crucial for an auditor to be capable of assessing and, most importantly, finding all storage units within a computer to ensure that all sensitive information is secure.
While IT Auditors do not need to have extensive knowledge of the physical components of storage devices (such as the intricacies of a hard drive), we should have the knowledge to explain our findings and provide evidence of possible negligence in our discoveries. For instance, it is possible that a corporate manager does not necessarily understand what “cloud computing” means. Managers must recognize how and where their data is stored, what the pros and cons of using “the cloud” are, and alternatives such as external hard drive or thumb drive that is typically associated with data storage.
Storage is one of the most important components to any computer owner, similar to how storage in a home is important to the occupant. We have locks on doors, security systems, and compartments within the home itself (closets, drawers, safes). For an information system, we have a password protected user account, firewalls, antivirus, and storage for data, such as disk drive and cloud-based hard drive. These components can differ from user to user, which is why it is important to have various storage options avaible, and an understanding of the convenience, risk, or benefit for each variety of storage module.
Patrick J. Wasson says
Thank you for your comment!! Good work on circling this back to your future work as an IT Auditor!
Yuchong Wang says
As an IT Auditor, the reason for us to understand the importance and appreciate of the variety of storage components that exist in an organization is that when people talk about IT, people immediately relate to you as a computer kind of guy. Without a decent understanding of computer’s components are not going to make the image of us as IT people look legit. Furthermore, it helps us to understand that every component is in charge of the different area, just like an organization has many different branches of executives. It all relates pretty well in my opinion.
Patrick J. Wasson says
Thank you for your comment!!
Jason M Mays says
Secondary storage is a key player in determining the speed performance of a system. Understanding the read and write ability of each type of hard drive can help organizations achieve process speed goals. A mishandled installation of hardware can also be the reason a system can’t reach its intended potential. An auditor needs to take this kind of information when analyzing an IS.
Secondary storage type may also affect the steps taken to audit an IS. An example is the capability to defrag a disk may have implications related to confidentiality that may not be applicable to an SSD. Detecting fraud is also impacted by storage type.
Patrick J. Wasson says
Thank you for your comment!! Whether or not the hard drive is properly installed the Auditor still must take note of its existence and the data that exists on it!
Yuan Liu says
In my opinion, information security in the most important for a IT Auditor, because information security is the primary basement of equity security. Information security does not only relate personal information, its condition would effect all company department, such as supply chain and accounting department. Information is the media, result and record for all activity in organization and company. The storage components is an essential part as information storage. If there is any damage or lost of storage components, such as hard drive broken or USB drive lost. there would be a series of serious negative influence of a company. For example, if a employee lost his USB driver with all company employees’ ID, address and other personal information, hacker can use that to attack the operation system of the company or steal employees’ money from online bank. To study about storage component, it help us to evaluate the damage of storage and know how to fix it generally.
Patrick J. Wasson says
Thank you for your comment!!
Haixin Sun says
For me, it helps me to manage and control my laptop. My old laptop has C,D,E drive. But my new laptop only has C drive. From this class, I am capable of dividing into different drives. It is so practical for me sincerely. For IT Auditors, understanding of storage components also can help them to manage and control their PCs easily.