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As a staff auditor working for an international accounting firm, you are performing a data center walkthrough of Lookout Adventures. Lookout Adventures is an outdoor
As a staff auditor working for an international accounting firm, you are performing a data center walkthrough of Lookout Adventures. Lookout Adventures is an outdoor company that primarily sells mountain climbing and camping gear. Upon arriving at the Lookout Adventures headquarters in Colorado, you are introduced to Lilly Walters. As the manager of Lookout Adventures data center, she will be giving you a tour today. You have your clipboard so that you can take notes during the walkthroughspecifically, about things Lilly says. Lilly: Hi! My name is Lilly Walters, and Im the data center manager at Lookout Adventures. You: Nice to meet you, Lilly. Thanks for taking the time out of your day to walk us through the data center as part of the annual SOX testing that we perform. To kick off our testing, could you tell us a little more about the location where were standing? Lilly: Sure. We are at our headquarters in Denver, Colorado. We are currently on the ground level of the building, where the data center is located. We are about to enter through the front doors of the data center. We have a backdoor as well. You: Thank you for that. How do you secure the doors of the data center? Lilly: We have an access control vestibule. We have the first doors, which were currently standing outside of, and a second set of doors on the inside, which I will walk you through. Before we go in, I wanted to point out that we have cameras right outside of the first and second doors. This allows us to go back through video footage of whos entered and exited, if necessary. You: Great, thank you. Who has access to the primary and secondary doors in the access control vestibule? Lilly: We program all employee badges with physical access to different areas in the building. Access is on a need basis. Only data center employees have access to these doors, so their badges are programmed to allow them into the data center. Anyone else coming in will have to have an appointment, like you had, so they can be escorted into the data center. We review the listing of employees who have access to the data center on a quarterly basis. Are you ready to enter, or do you have other questions? You: Im ready, thanks. Lilly: As we enter the access control vestibule, you can see that the second set of doors also has a badge scanner and a camera. As we continue through these doors, we enter the operations center. Here is where the data center employees sit and monitor the data center. You will need to sign in, since you are a visitor. You also need to provide us with a reason for coming. You can just put internal audit review. You sign into the system. You: Okay, Im signed in. Lilly: As you can see, we have multiple computer monitors here in the operations center. This data is updated continuously. We monitor the environment of the inside of the main room. One of the screens gives us the current temperature and humidity of the room and even provides a heatmap of where there is higher temperature. Heatmapping is a cool technology that we recently implemented. It tells us if theres a section in the room that is warmer than other parts and can alert the data center personnel to air circulation issues. You: That is cool. How do you cool the temperature in the data center? Lilly: We have a separate air conditioning unit in the room. The cool air enters through vents located in the ceiling. Lets move into the main data center room so you can see the vents for yourself. You: That would be great. Now that were here, I notice how many power cords are running along the ceiling. How do you handle any power outages? Lilly: We use an uninterruptible power supply that helps with any power outages or surges. You: What about the backup environments? Could you talk about where your data backups are located? Lilly: Sure. We have a hot backup site in Miami, Florida. It is fully operational and ready for our data center personnel to work there if needed. Our critical data is continuously backed up at the hot site. This way, we wont lose any data if theres an emergency. We also perform full and incremental backups of less critical data on a regular basis. These backups are stored here at our headquarters. You: You mentioned a second entrance to the data centera backdoor. How do you secure that door? Lilly: That door is secured through badge access onlysame as the front doors. You: Okay. Lilly: Do you have any other questions for me now? You: Not right now, thank you. I will take my notes and type them up into a workpaper and create a listing of observations. I will email you if I have any more questions. Thank you so much for taking time to meet with me and walk me through the data center. Lilly: No problem, Im always happy to help. Dont hesitate to email me if you think of any more questions. Lilly escorts you back into the operations center so you can sign out. After that, she takes you through the access control vestibule and back to the hallway. Once you are back at your desk, you review the notes you took during the walkthrough. You need to compile a list of audit observations (things that you are worried might be risky about the data center) for your manager. If Lilly did not specifically talk about something, it is safe to assume that the data center doesnt have it. List at least three things you think are concerns in the Lookout Adventures data center. Be as specific as possible
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