IS Operations Management: An Auditor's View
Most IT failures an auditor meets are operations failures. Here's what to test and what evidence to ask for.
IS operations is everything that keeps systems running after go-live: batch jobs, backups, patches, changes, capacity, the helpdesk and the logs. Most material IT failures a statutory auditor ever hears about (a missed end-of-day batch at a bank, a backup that would not restore, an unpatched server) are operations failures, not design failures.
DISA Module 4 covers this ground as IS management, IS operations and software operations. For an auditor the question is narrow: are operations run under defined procedures, by people who cannot also change what they run, with evidence that each control actually operated through the period?
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Operations Processes and What the Auditor Asks For
Job scheduling (batch runs)
What goes wrong
Jobs run out of sequence, are skipped or are rerun without approval; operators edit job parameters
Evidence to ask for
Scheduler logs, exception reports, approvals for ad hoc and rerun jobs
Backup and restoration
What goes wrong
Backups complete but cannot be restored; off-site copies missing
Evidence to ask for
Backup policy, success logs, restoration test records, off-site or vault register
Patch management
What goes wrong
Critical patches pending for months; patches applied straight to production
Evidence to ask for
Patch inventory, risk rating, test sign-off, deployment reports, exception register
Change and configuration management
What goes wrong
Unauthorised changes; configuration drifts from the approved baseline
Evidence to ask for
Change tickets matched to system-generated change lists; baseline comparison reports
Incident and problem management (helpdesk)
What goes wrong
Tickets closed without fixing the root cause; recurring outages
Evidence to ask for
Ticket ageing, reopened tickets, problem records linked to incidents
Capacity and performance
What goes wrong
Systems slow down or fail at month-end and year-end peaks
Evidence to ask for
Utilisation trends, SLA reports, capacity plan
Log management
What goes wrong
Logs disabled, overwritten or kept too short to investigate
Evidence to ask for
Logging configuration, retention settings, clock synchronisation evidence
| Process | What goes wrong | Evidence to ask for |
|---|---|---|
| Job scheduling (batch runs) | Jobs run out of sequence, are skipped or are rerun without approval; operators edit job parameters | Scheduler logs, exception reports, approvals for ad hoc and rerun jobs |
| Backup and restoration | Backups complete but cannot be restored; off-site copies missing | Backup policy, success logs, restoration test records, off-site or vault register |
| Patch management | Critical patches pending for months; patches applied straight to production | Patch inventory, risk rating, test sign-off, deployment reports, exception register |
| Change and configuration management | Unauthorised changes; configuration drifts from the approved baseline | Change tickets matched to system-generated change lists; baseline comparison reports |
| Incident and problem management (helpdesk) | Tickets closed without fixing the root cause; recurring outages | Ticket ageing, reopened tickets, problem records linked to incidents |
| Capacity and performance | Systems slow down or fail at month-end and year-end peaks | Utilisation trends, SLA reports, capacity plan |
| Log management | Logs disabled, overwritten or kept too short to investigate | Logging configuration, retention settings, clock synchronisation evidence |
Backup Types in One Line Each
A favourite MCQ area because the three are easy to confuse.
- Full backup
- Copies all selected data every time. Slowest to take, fastest to restore.
- Incremental backup
- Copies only what changed since the last backup of any type. Fast to take; a restore needs the last full backup plus every incremental since.
- Differential backup
- Copies everything changed since the last full backup. Grows each day; a restore needs only the last full backup plus the latest differential.
- Restoration test
- Actually restoring a backup to prove it works. A successful backup log proves only that the copy ran, not that it can be used.
Segregation of Duties in IT Operations
The financial-audit principle applies unchanged; only the roles are new.
- check_circleDevelopers should not have write access to production. In a bank's core banking system, a developer who can move code to production can also change interest calculation logic without review.
- check_circleOperators run jobs and monitor systems; they should not change programs, job definitions or master data.
- check_circleDatabase administrators hold powerful access and need compensating controls: logged activity reviewed by someone independent of the DBA team.
- check_circleSystem administrators should not be able to switch off or edit the logs that record their own actions.
- check_circleWhere a small IT team makes full segregation impractical, look for compensating detective controls, such as independent review of change and activity logs.
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Indian Rules That Touch Operations
CERT-In's Directions of 28 April 2022 under section 70B(6) of the IT Act require service providers, intermediaries, data centres, body corporates and government organisations to keep logs of all ICT systems for a rolling 180 days within India, and to synchronise system clocks to NIC or NPL time servers (or sources traceable to them). Both are now standard operations checks: logs you can't line up by time are weak evidence.
How the DISA Assessment Test Tests This
Expect scenario questions that ask for the best control or the auditor's first concern. A typical stem: backups succeed every night but have never been restored; what is the auditor's main concern? The answer is restorability, not the backup frequency.
The common trap is choosing a preventive control when the stem asks how a problem would be detected (or the reverse). Unauthorised changes to production are prevented by access restriction and change approval, but detected by comparing system change logs to approved tickets. Read the verb in the question before reading the options.
FAQs
What is IS operations in DISA?expand_more
The DISA Module 4 area covering how IT is run day to day: asset, change, configuration, version, log and user management, helpdesk, performance measurement, backups and patch management, plus incident response.
What is the difference between incremental and differential backup?expand_more
Incremental copies changes since the last backup of any kind; differential copies all changes since the last full backup. Incremental is faster to take, differential is faster to restore.
What does an IS auditor check in patch management?expand_more
That there is an inventory of systems and pending patches, that patches are risk-rated, tested before production, deployed within the organisation's own defined timelines, and that exceptions are approved and tracked.
Why does an auditor care about job scheduling?expand_more
Batch jobs post interest, depreciation, payroll and interfaces. A skipped, duplicated or manually rerun job can misstate the books without any user entry, so the auditor checks approvals, exception handling and scheduler logs.
Next steps
- Database Controlsarrow_forward
- Change Managementarrow_forward
- Incident Responsearrow_forward
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Assessment Test format, timed and scored.