Information Technology: Infrastructure, Operations, and Service Management
Infrastructure
Candidates should recognize servers, storage, networks, databases, virtualization, and cloud service models. Infrastructure as a service provides computing resources; platform as a service provides development and runtime environments; software as a service provides complete applications. Under shared responsibility, the provider secures the underlying cloud infrastructure while the customer manages identities, access, and data. Virtualization improves utilization but concentrates risk, so hypervisor security and host hardening matter.
Operations and service management
IT operations cover job scheduling, backup and restore, capacity monitoring, and change control. Service management frameworks such as ITIL distinguish incidents (unplanned interruptions restored quickly) from problems (underlying root causes investigated). Change management authorizes and schedules changes; configuration management maintains the configuration management database; service-level agreements define expected service and remedies. Segregation of duties should separate development, testing, and production access.
Traps
Questions often confuse incident management with problem management, or change management with release management. Another common trap is assigning cloud responsibility incorrectly: in SaaS, the customer still controls user access and data classification. Backup copies must be tested and stored securely offsite; an untested backup is not reliable evidence of recoverability.
Worked example
A company buys a SaaS payroll application. The provider is responsible for the application, platform, and infrastructure. The company remains responsible for provisioning user accounts, enforcing multifactor authentication, reviewing access rights, and classifying payroll data. If an employee retains access after termination, that is a customer control failure, not a provider failure.