For many years, a debate has raged about the value of technology inventories for disaster recovery and business continuity, and whether they should be performed by your internal IT department or an outside organization. But today, there’s a new twist to the debate: how much will inventories help your preparedness for litigation and electronic data discovery?
At the most basic level, technology inventories are a detailed roster of a company’s IT systems — e.g., hardware, software and data. The document should contain current network drawings, a list of computing devices (servers, PCs, laptops), programs, data maps and security tools and protocols. To be effective, the inventory needs to be a “living” document that is maintained and updated as technology and data change within the company.
