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What a proper independent technology audit examines, what you receive, how the work runs week by week, and, because almost nobody in this market will tell you, exactly what it costs in the UK.
Boards commission an independent technology audit when they are tired of being told and want to be shown. The reports reaching them are produced by the people whose work is being reported, the spend keeps climbing, and somebody finally asks the useful question: what is true here? This guide explains what a proper audit covers, what you receive, how the work runs week by week, and, because almost nobody in this market will tell you, exactly what it costs.
The short answer. An independent technology audit is an evidence based examination of your technology by a party with no stake in the answer, producing a written verdict a board, investor, insurer or customer can rely on. It typically covers the estate, security controls, resilience, people and supplier dependencies, spend, and the claims made about all of them. At Intelance, audits start from £4,500 + VAT, most sit between £8,500 and £18,000, and a focused audit concludes in one to four weeks.
Five triggers account for almost every audit we run. An investment decision: the board is about to commit serious money on the strength of internal reporting. An external demand: an insurer, enterprise customer or regulator wants independent evidence rather than self assessment. An inherited estate: a new CEO, CFO or CTO wants ground truth before owning someone else’s decisions. A feeling that will not go away: spend rising, delivery slowing, incidents repeating, and every status report still green. A rehearsal: an honest check before certification or an external audit, while findings are still cheap to fix.
Boards do not need to invent the question list. The NCSC Board Toolkit sets out what directors should be asking about technology and cyber risk, and an independent audit exists to give those questions evidence backed answers.
The scope is tailored to the question you need answered, but a full audit examines six domains.
| Domain | What is examined | Evidence checked |
|---|---|---|
| The estate | Inventory against reality, licences, end of life systems, shadow IT. | Discovery output, configurations, licence records, contracts. |
| Security controls | Whether controls operate rather than whether they are documented: patching, access, backups that restore. | Configurations, logs, restore evidence, sampled systems. |
| Resilience | Single points of failure, continuity plans, recovery that has been tested rather than written. | Architecture, DR test records, incident history. |
| People and suppliers | Key person concentrations, contractor dependence, supplier lock in and exit costs. | Organisation reality, contracts, change of control clauses. |
| Spend and value | Run rate against plan, duplicated tooling, deferred maintenance waiting to become next year’s crisis. | Invoices, contracts, budgets, renewal schedules. |
| Claims and certificates | Whether what the board has been told matches the evidence, and whether certificates are current and correctly scoped. | Issuing registers, scope statements, board packs versus findings. |
A focused audit takes one or two of these domains and goes deep. A board level audit covers all six. Either way the discipline is identical: claims are tested at source, in the systems and registers themselves rather than in workshops about them.
Four things. A written verdict whose executive summary a director can read in ten minutes without a translator. Findings that carry weight: each with severity, consequence and the cost of doing nothing, instead of a heat map with everything amber. An evidence appendix, so every conclusion can be traced to something inspected. And a prioritised action list that distinguishes what is urgent from what is merely untidy.
One thing you will not receive is a sales document. Where findings need fixing you are free to use anyone, including us, and the audit is priced to stand alone, never as a loss leader for remediation. An audit that exists to generate its own follow on work is a brochure with findings.
Larger firms rarely publish prices for this work. We do. An Independent Technology Audit starts from £4,500 + VAT for a focused, single question engagement: one domain, one system, or a small estate. Most audits sit between £8,500 and £18,000: a fuller estate, several domains, evidence tested at depth, and a board grade report. The fullest version, the Technology Board Pack, runs from £18,000 over three to four weeks.
Four things move the price: the size and complexity of the estate, the number of domains in scope, the depth of evidence testing required, and the audience for the output, since a board pack demands more than a management report. One thing never moves it: the fee is fixed and agreed in writing before work starts, so the number you approve is the number you pay. If the question is a transaction rather than your own estate, the same discipline runs as M&A technology due diligence from £15,000, with its own checklist.
First, the question is scoped precisely, because assure our technology is not a question, and the evidence request and access are agreed. Days two to ten: evidence at source. Configurations inspected, registers pulled, certificates verified with the issuing bodies, contracts read, restores tested where they matter. Interviews happen, but they steer the evidence work rather than replace it. The final stretch: testing and the verdict. Claims meet evidence, findings are weighed, and the draft is reviewed with your sponsor on one firm rule: we check facts with management, and we do not negotiate conclusions. Most audits conclude in one to four weeks, and the pace comes from precision rather than headcount.
Independence: ask what happens when they find problems. If the answer is a remediation proposal, the audit was bait. Method: ask whether they test evidence at source or run workshops. Workshops audit opinions. Who turns up: the person who scopes it should deliver it, with a name on the report. Price: fixed, in writing, before work starts. Output: ask for a redacted sample. If a director could not read it unaided, it is not board grade. Any provider worth hiring, ourselves included, should pass all five without flinching.
At Intelance, from £4,500 + VAT for a focused single question audit, with most full audits between £8,500 and £18,000, and a complete board level technology pack from £18,000. Every fee is fixed and agreed in writing before work starts.
One to four weeks for most engagements. A focused single domain audit can conclude in days. A full board pack takes three to four weeks. Speed comes from a precisely scoped question and evidence gathered at source.
An audit is one form of technology assurance: the general purpose, evidence based examination of an estate or a question. Assurance is the wider family, which also includes due diligence, supplier verification and delivery reviews. Everything in the family shares independence and evidence. The audit is simply its most requested member.
Whoever has to rely on technology claims they did not produce: boards before investment decisions, audit committees signing risk statements, new executives inheriting an estate, owners preparing to sell, and any organisation asked by an insurer or enterprise customer for independent evidence.
Less than the reporting cycle it replaces. A well run audit costs your team days rather than weeks: a structured evidence request, focused access, and a small number of precise interviews. Teams with nothing to hide tend to find the process clarifying, because an independent verdict also vindicates what is working.
Emmanuel Olatunji
Chief Enterprise Architecture Partner
Emmanuel founded Intelance in 2017 and has led architecture, AI governance, cyber and deal engagements across the UK, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Every Intelance engagement runs under his direction, and every guide he publishes comes from that work.
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