BPX - Free IT Audit PDF

Free IT Audit for
BPX
01/11/2019
Performed by Ben Curtis
0115 880 0044 / info@airit.co.uk / airit.co.uk

Copyright
© Copyright 2019 by Air IT. All rights reserved.
The Technology Hub, Unit 7, Interchange 25 Business Park, Bostocks Lane, Sandiacre, Nottingham, NG10 5QG
Air IT is a limited company registered in England No: 5543898 / VAT No: GB 870 9198 86 2
Table of Contents
Copyright ............................................................................................... 2
Table of Contents .................................................................................. 3
Introduction ........................................................................................... 4
Findings & Recommendations ............................................................. 4
Server Infrastructure ................................................................................................... 4
Backups ...................................................................................................................... 4
Firewall ………………………………………………………………………………………..5
Wireless Infrastructure ................................................................................................ 5
Emails ………………………………………………………………………………………..5
Telephony ................................................................................................................... 6
Workstation Infrastructure........................................................................................... 6
Security…………….. ................................................................................................... 7
Summary ............................................................................................... 7
Introduction
BPX invited Air IT to perform a free high-level audit of their IT and
communications infrastructure.
Information was gathered by interviewing the internal IT team and

running an internal network audit scan using Air IT’s approved network
auditing tool.
BPX’s Head Office is based in Leicester with branches throughout the

UK.
Findings & Recommendations

Server Infrastructure
All servers are running Windows 2012 or later as their operating system, except for a
Windows 2003 server. The Windows 2003 server was noted to be a file server that the
internal IT team are moving away from, however Windows 2003 server went end of life by
Microsoft in July 2015 meaning that the organisation has been at threat for over four years
due to this server still being on the network. It is advised that the utmost priority is given to
get this server migrated to some other resource and then decommissioned.
There are two separate Hyper-V failover clusters with two hosts connected to a storage
array. The reason presented behind there being two separate clusters is one being old and
the other being new. It is advised that these clusters are combined so there is only one
across the organisation to simplify management, maintenance and performance.
Backups
Backups are done through Microsoft DPM server with an Azure backup regime in place to
compliment this. After questioning internal IT staff, it seems that tape backup is still in place,
and so is backup to USB external hard drives. Whilst this used to be good backup practice,
nowadays it’s better to remove the manual input required from a human and automate the
offsite process entirely.
In addition, recovery times from these devices would take a matter of days rather than hours
which would cause massive business disruption.
We would advise that the offsite backup regime is changed to fully automated cloud, where
backup images are replicated to an offsite location and they are easily retrievable in the
event of a disaster. This will bolster the disaster recovery strategy that the organisation
encompasses.
Firewall
There is a SonicWall NSA device used as the primary firewall at Head Office. There is only
one of these in place and given that all branches connect into Head Office in some fashion it
is advised that a secondary is purchased for failover purposes if the primary firewall failed.
Wireless Infrastructure
The organisation uses Draytek Vigor wireless access points for wireless connectivity across
all sites. These wireless access points are independent of each other and it was discovered
that there is no wireless guest network separation at Head Office, meaning that visitors to the
site who can connect to their wireless guest network have full exposure to the whole internal
network. This is a massive security risk and should be a priority to sort moving forwards.
Another aspect to consider is implementing different wireless access points that work as a
mesh, meaning that users can float between access points when moving without losing
connection. A mesh wireless configuration is also a lot easier to configure and manage.
Emails
The email system being used is on-premise Microsoft Exchange 2013 with anti-spam filtering
through on-premise solution called Vipre and a cloud-based solution called Very Good Email.
Having read up on both anti-spam filtering solutions they do not appear to be very reputable
in the email protection realm, and a more robust solution would be recommended for review.
The solutions also lack a lot of advanced features that can be found in the industry such as
URL protection, internal email protection and anti-spoofing.
For an organisation of this size it is recommended that they look to move towards a cloud-
based email platform such as Microsoft Office 365. The benefits of this include:
• No reliance on an on-premise solution

• If the Exchange server or Head Office had an outage, then all email traffic comes to a
halt
• The Exchange server requires regular maintenance by the internal IT team
• Can be more cost effective compared to Exchange server licencing
• Ability to have a much wider feature set that Microsoft Office 365 offers, such as
Microsoft Teams for conferencing
• Licencing Microsoft Office software on workstations using the Office 365 model,
which can be more cost effective and ensure the latest version is being used
Telephony
The phone system is on-premise and runs on an Avaya PBX. Some of the branches connect
to this phone system whilst others have their own, independent on-premise phone system.
It is recommended to move the phone system into the cloud as this improves the flexibility
and means that each branch can be independent whilst connected to the same cloud phone
system. This means if Internet connectivity or the phone system at Head Office suffered an
outage, other sites would not be impacted and could continue working.
It was noted that some branches still use ISDN rather than SIP, and it is advised that the
organisation moves to SIP as a priority because traditional PSTN lines will becoming end of
service within a few years.
Workstation Infrastructure
After questioning the internal IT team, the workstations within the organisation are running a
mixture of Windows 7 and Windows 10 operating systems. Windows 7 will be becoming end
of life in January 2020 meaning Microsoft will no longer issue any security updates or
patches to the operating system and this could pose a significant security risk to the
organisation.
It is recommended these Windows 7 workstations are replaced/upgraded to Windows 10.
Security
The anti-virus solution used throughout the organisation is Sophos Intercept X with built-in
web filtering features. This is a reputable anti-virus solution and is cloud based meaning
there is no reliance on anything on-premise. The only thing to note in relation to the anti-virus
is that it was noticed a lot of servers do not have any anti-virus installed, which makes the
servers critically vulnerable to virus and malware infections.
Our security scan picked up some other items that need attention:
• 53 user accounts have passwords that do not expire

• Anti-virus is not installed on some workstations
• 23 user accounts were found to have not logged in within 30 days to the domain –
inactive accounts should be disabled
Summary
To conclude there are a lot of archaic methods and technologies in place when it comes to
the IT and communications environment. There is a lot of management and maintenance
when it comes to supporting and ensuring on-premise resources can cope with the workload
of Head office and all the branches. If more systems and services were cloud-based, then it
would reduce the administrative overhead. It would also be beneficial from a redundancy
perspective, as if anything currently happens at Head Office in terms of an outage, then it
has the ability of causing mass downtime across several functions and services.
Across the organisation around half of all workstations are still running Windows 7 which
becomes end of life in January 2020. It is imperative that these workstations are replaced or
upgraded to Windows 10 to ensure that the organisation can continue to benefit from
Microsoft security patches and updates.
In security terms there are some basic principles which seem to be lacking, such as having
inactive user accounts and a relaxed password policy where passwords are set to not expire.

BPX - Free IT Audit PDF

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Free IT Audit for

0115 880 0044 / info@airit.co.uk / airit.co.uk

Information was gathered by interviewing the internal IT team and

BPX’s Head Office is based in Leicester with branches throughout the

Findings & Recommendations

• No reliance on an on-premise solution

It is recommended these Windows 7 workstations are replaced/upgraded to Windows 10.

• 53 user accounts have passwords that do not expire

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