Exploring Gander's Capabilities

Gander audit management solution harnesses WebCom cutting edge distributed computing technology. Click here for a technical overview of the WebCom technology employed. Exploiting WebCom's capabilities with Gander provides a powerful enterprise audit project automation and management tool. The following scenarios demonstrate how the technology is utilised to provide a comprehensive solution to the logistical problems associated with IT audits.
The examples described below can be viewed from the point of view of the auditor performing an actual audit, or an internal auditor or IT manager who wishes to evaluate their infrastructure in preparation for an audit.

The Single User

Gander automates auditing, to as large an extent as is possible (see diagram). With Gander, a single user can target audit queries to any auditable technologies supported by the Gander Audit Library. A query wizard also allows the user to create their own queries for use in future audits.
When the user configures and launches an audit, Gander automatically extracts information from the auditable entities, prompting the user for extra information only where necessary (for example, queries which require a visual inspection, or assessing whether an AUP document exists, etc.). The results of these queries are collated ready for reporting. When an Audit has been executed, the user may generate any number of reports on various dimensions of the audit.

For example, three reports might be generated: A report on all instances of a particular technology, a report on the compliance level in a particular line of business, a report on all entities in a particular geographic location, etc.
Report approval can be configured for any reports, or placed as a constraint at the outset of the audit configuration. If so, WebCom will target the appropriate user (via email, sms, application client prompt, etc.) and prompt them to evaluate and sign off on the appropriate report(s).

Benefits: In this single user environment, the benefits to the auditor are clear. The auditor can save time through not having to manually extract all information from each auditable entity - Gander can do the donkey work for them. In fact, Gander can simultaneously audit many entities in parallel, thus enabling the auditor to perform a much more complete audit within the same amount of time as a manual audit of a sample of machines.
Another benefit is that the single auditor does not have to be an expert in every different type of technology, Gander will gather the necessary information allowing the auditor to concentrate on assessing the results of the queries.
It is clear that Gander can not only reduce costs for auditors but can also increase productivity and capability.

Enterprise Audit Teams

Whilst the benefits of using Gander are clear for the single user, the real power of Gander comes to the fore when dealing with large scale audit projects involving multiple auditors.
In this scenario, Gander takes full advantage of the capabilities of the WebCom distribution engine. This allows the Gander user to spread the audit across many Gander instances. For example, an audit team leader might configure an audit and allocate subsections of the audit to many team members, perhaps according to their expertise, or perhaps according to geographic locations.

However, true scaleability does not stop there and Gander can support even the largest distributed projects with n hierarchies of responsibility. This is provided through the exploitation of WebCom's the distributed computing capabilities. In larger projects, an auditor who is delegated a subset of the audit task may in turn delegate work to other auditors. This process may be repeated as often as necessary, so long as it is within the constraints (expressed as simple policies) laid down by the originator of the audit (the team leader in these examples).