I am performing our first comprehensive IT audit (which I now wish that we would have outsourced!), but anyway I am using an Alex Information workprogram which has gone pretty well up to now. One of the audit processes asks the following:

Determine the configuration of the core processing platform.

Determine the configuration of the item processing platform.

Determine telecommunications configuration.

Can someone please explain what this is requiring me to look at? Is this a programming issue or is this a "how is it built - physically issue"?

I would appreciate any help before I find a brick wall to bang my head into!

My opinion is that it is referring to the physical and logical composition of the various systems. Essentially, you are to describe the physical connectivity, physical and logical access controls, software configurations and data flows of those systems. This would include hardware make and model, software versions, datacomm configuration / speeds, etc.

Within Computer Science, configuration means:

• The way in which a computer system is set up: changed the configuration by resetting the parameters.
  
• The set of constituent components, such as memory, a hard disk, a monitor, and an operating system, that make up a computer system.
  
• The way that the components of a computer network are connected.

This is a very complex project, but your software vendor can probably offer some assistance (parameters forward). A process flow chart should be used relating to hardware.