Confirming IS Department's Compliance with Service Level Agreements

C.

To confirm that an IS (Information Systems) department is meeting its Service Level Agreements (SLAs), an IS auditor needs to assess various performance metrics of the department. Out of the options provided, the most useful metric would be the system utilization reports (option D).

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are contracts between the IT department and its customers (i.e., internal departments, external clients, or end-users) that specify the level of service the IT department is obligated to provide. The SLAs often include performance metrics such as availability, response time, and system uptime. The primary purpose of SLAs is to ensure that the IT department provides the required level of service to its customers and meets their expectations.

To assess whether an IS department is meeting its SLAs, an IS auditor needs to evaluate several factors, such as system availability, response time, system performance, and system capacity. Out of the given options, system utilization reports are the most useful tool to evaluate the performance of an IS department against its SLAs.

System utilization reports provide detailed information about the utilization of the IT systems, including the network, servers, storage devices, and applications. These reports include performance metrics such as CPU utilization, memory usage, disk I/O rates, network traffic, and application response times. By analyzing these metrics, an auditor can determine whether the IT systems are meeting their SLA requirements, such as response time, availability, and capacity.

System downtime reports (option A) may also be useful in assessing the performance of an IS department, but they only provide information on system outages, which is only one aspect of SLA compliance. Downtime reports do not provide any insights into the overall performance of the IT systems, including response time, capacity, and utilization.

IS strategic plans (option B) are useful for understanding the long-term goals and objectives of an IS department, but they do not provide any information on SLA compliance. Capacity planning tools (option C) are useful for predicting future resource requirements and optimizing resource utilization, but they do not provide any information on current SLA compliance.

In summary, system utilization reports (option D) would be the most useful tool for an IS auditor to confirm that an IS department is meeting its SLAs.