Audit Green It

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Introduction

Green IT or Green Computing illustrates an environmentally responsible and eco-friendly use of computer and their resources. Today majority of the businesses heavily depend on IT to deliver their services and in many organizations, IT is the largest single consumer of energy hence, saving on the energy used in IT can have a huge impact. IT has been a major contributor of global carbon footprint (calculated in terms of amount of greenhouse gas emission (GHGE)), according to a new study from McMaster University at Canada, GHGE from ICT (Information and Communication Technology) could grow from roughly 1.5% in 2018 to 14% by 2040 worldwide.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Sustainability or Greening business are business imperatives that are being used interchangeably in various organizations to incorporate Green IT initiative in order to address overconsumption of compute power, electricity, fuel, greenhouse gas emissions, inefficient waste disposal and many more. United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) and other law enforcing govt. and regulatory agencies have established certain laws and regulation around green engineering which are required to be complied by organizations. Many organizations are continuously examining and improving their own practices by implementing Green IT initiatives such as cloud computing, virtualization, outsourcing, data center redesign, workstation management etc. to make themselves green. However, not all Green IT solutions are compatible with the existing functions of an organization, some are incongruent and mutually exclusive.

Some green solutions alter the way IT functions at large, which directly affects the security and controls built around the IT system, as the IT function changes, there are changes in the audit universe too, giving rise to a great need of auditing the entire system from a whole new perspective.

In such scenario, an auditor needs to understand the business and controls objectives in order to modify and incorporate the changes to planned individual audits or conduct a separate audit of the green control objectives. In this paper, we will study and discuss audit solutions to such scenarios.

Through this paper, we will also discuss in depth about the various laws and regulations that are required to be complied with in order to ensure sustainable use, along with the Green IT Policies, Controls Frameworks and current practices that are adopted by industries to address Green IT. Although organizations claim sustainable use of ecological resources, the truth is in the rush to deploy the advances in computing and communication, IT departments have adopted very inefficient practices. In order to ascertain, the claims of IT industries, there is a great need of auditing the processes of the industries against the established laws. By the means of auditing the Green IT practices of IT industry, our goal is to help bridge the gap between good green intentions and sustainable IT excellence. 

Outline Approach

Detailed outline of Green IT and its Initiatives

• Green IT Background
• Green Engineering Laws and Regulations
• Green IT Initiatives

Study of Factors Driving Green IT and its Life Cycle

• Factors Driving Green IT
• Green IT Life Cycle – Organizational Perspective
• Advantages and Disadvantages of Green IT

Study of Impact of Implementing Green IT

• Examples and Case Study of Green IT implementation
• Impact of introducing Green IT activities
• Challenges faced during Green IT implementation

Auditing Green IT

• Study of Green IT Policy
• Study of Green Control Objectives
• Study of suitable Controls Framework for Green IT
• Plan a Green IT Audit
• Perform a Green IT Audit
• Report Findings and Evidences
• Recommendation for Business Value Add

Research on Real-time Successful Implementation of Green IT

Scope

The trend of sustainable use of resources and greenness of environment in the IT industries have caught much attention in the recent years however, little is being done by organizations as part of addressing Green IT. The IBM Corporation estimates that for every 100 kilowatt-hours of electricity supplied by the power company to a typical data center, as few as 3 kilowatt-hours are actually doing productive work. The remaining energy is consumed by first powering and then cooling underused hardware. On contrary, many organizations such as IBM, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, APC, HP, Dell, and EMC, these companies are creating products that are more environmentally friendly and energy efficient for their customers, as well as work collaboratively with organizations like The Green Grid, which focuses on helping the IT industry address energy use.

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