Home : Software Licensing 101 : Lesson 5

Lesson 5: Perform Internal Software Audits

From your baseline assessment you have learned what licenses you own, and what software your employees need. Now you just need the final piece of the puzzle: What software is actually installed?

How to Audit Software

Software auditing might sound complex, but it is really fairly simple. All you need to do is walk around to every computer and make a list of what software is installed on it. Sounds easy right? Sounds time consuming too? Well, there is some good news. There are a great many pieces of software written to audit the software loaded on computers on your network. The DGard Software Auditor will be released later this year. Like the DGard Software Compliance Manager, it will be made with the small business in mind. In the meantime, other network auditors are available. If you don't want to use one, or if you are a small enough business, you can go to each computer and list out the software that's been installed. Check the Start Menu and in the control panel under Add/Remove Programs. Between the two you should have a fairly complete list.

You can now compare your software audit to the needs you previously calculated. Any software in the audit that did not show up in the needs assessment should be investigated and either removed from the machine or added to the needs list.

Automated software audits are generally fairly easy and painless to run. One thing to keep in mind though is that no automated tool will pick up every piece of software. It is still a good practice to keep your eyes open for any rogue software on machines. If the software manager is from your IT staff, this can be easily performed just by being aware when helping users with typical issues.

Quick List

• Software audits answer the question "what software is actually on the computers?"
• There are many automated software products. DGard Software Auditor is due out later in 2007.
• Manual audits can find software that is missed in automated audits. IT staff awareness makes this process easy and random.