How and Why Your Business Should Conduct Cybersecurity audit

As companies accept new digital technologies, the possibility of being targeted by cyber-attacks increases. Increasing network complication through digital innovation often makes unique network differences that cyber attackers can take advantage of. If left unchecked, these risks may weaken the goals of your association. Therefore, companies must implement an effective cybersecurity plan.

Managing cybersecurity audits is a crucial factor in the success of these programs. Regularly working cybersecurity audits can help companies detect gaps in their cybersecurity infrastructure. Companies can also use checks to assess compliance with various regulations and laws. Responsibilities of Cyber Security Professionals have a wide range of duties, but the core of their commitment is to protect online data from being compromised.

The established network security audit plan enables enterprises to effectively examine their security status as the network develops and becomes more and more complex. This blog describes the steps required to create detailed and extensive security risk management for your business.

What is a Cybersecurity Audit?

Cybersecurity audits can be essential for finding critical flaws in a company’s cybersecurity architecture. These evaluations can help companies identify and improve the content on the network, the content that needs to be protected, and the vulnerabilities in existing protection measures.

But, despite the importance of cybersecurity compliance audits, many firms are still not ready to conduct audits. To perform an audit immediately, the auditor must have access to specific network security control tools provided by the audited organization. It requires the managed entity to make some preparations in advance.

Four types of security assessments every business should conduct

Here are four types of security audits you should regularly conduct to keep your business running in top shape:

Risk assessment

Risk assessment can help you identify, estimate, and focus on your organization’s risks. A security audit is a method of evaluating a company based on specific security standards. It may not be the issue in a particular company, but security checks can help you resolve compliance issues in a highly regulated industry.

Vulnerability assessment

Vulnerability assessment can find weaknesses in security, design, execution or internal control procedures. Identify vulnerabilities that may be activated or used to cause security breaches. Through the vulnerability test, the IT team or external experts check and verify the system defects that can be exploited. They may run specific software to search for exposures, run tests from within the network, or use authorized remote access to determine the issues that need to be resolved to meet security requirements.

Penetration test

The unique thing about penetration testing is that it involves “hacking” professionals who violate the security system. There are different types of penetration testing as this kind of security inspection can lead to information about potential gaps in the infrastructure. Penetration testers apply the latest hacking techniques to discover weaknesses in mobile platforms, cloud technology and operating systems.

There are several types of penetration tests you can participate in. Such as, internal penetration tests concentrate on internal systems, while external penetration tests emphasize assets that are publicly revealed. You might think of a hybrid penetration test (including both internal and external penetration tests) for complete understanding, as well.

Compliance audit

Compliance audits are required for companies that need to comply with specific regulations (such as retail, financial, healthcare, and government agencies). The purpose is to show whether the company complies with the laws needed to conduct business in the industry.

How to Conduct a Cybersecurity audit?

How to perform a Cybersecurity audit: External vs Internal

There are several ways to collect the required data, but first, you need to determine whether to perform an internal audit or an external audit.

External audit

External auditors can bring extensive knowledge and experience to the desktop to identify security vulnerabilities and flaws in the IT infrastructure. But the biggest problem is that external auditors are expensive, and it is never easy to find professionals with the required qualifications and skills.

The achievement of the audit largely depends on the level of communication with the auditor. If the reviewer does not have immediate access to the required data type, it can be time-consuming, costly unnecessarily, and can lead to erroneous results. All these factors make external audits unnecessary. Therefore, in large companies, this is usually seen as an ongoing expense.

Internal audit

In addition, for most small business owners, an internal audit is a more viable option. You already know your business procedure, so you can gather the data you need without interrupting your working model. The outside expert must find something before starting to work.

How does a cybersecurity audit differ from a cybersecurity assessment?

Cybersecurity assessment is related to the effectiveness of the organization’s security management. The auditor checks whether specific control measures have been implemented, and the cybersecurity audit assesses the effectiveness of each control measure in risk management. A cybersecurity assessment can help you evaluate your organization’s cyber health and total risk level. In addition, cybersecurity assessments should not be processed by third parties.

5 Questions to Include in Cybersecurity Audit

Internal audit may seem complicated and time-consuming, but in reality, it is just a matter of setting goals and KPIs and ensuring that all the company’s strategies are adjusted to meet the requirements. You can do this simply by answering the following questions.

What are our security parameters?

The first task is to determine what factors pose a risk to your daily operations. In other words, you need to create a resource list. You count that as one of the following:

Anything vital that requires time or money to rectify if it were to go wrong
Computer equipment
Sensitive information (both company and customer data)

What threats do we face?

Once the most valuable assets have been identified, the support that threatens their need to be placed. It is an essential step in the process because you will face everything from typical employee password protection and data leakage to disaster threats such as fires and floods.

Are your current security measures working?

Once you have found the possible threats, you need to sit down and evaluate whether current security measures can solve the task of protecting the cyberinfrastructure.

How do I prioritize risks?

Selecting the risks within your audit is maybe the single most essential step in the entire procedure.

How to use the results of the audit?

In the final part of the audit, you need to obtain a list of priority threats and decide how to take security measures to eradicate or eliminate the threat risk.

Conclusion

Now you have all the knowledge to finish the internal security audit. It is important to remember that internal security audits are not a “one-stop” solution. They are a continuous process. The first safety inspection should be used as the basis for all subsequent inspections. Measuring success and failure is the only way to construct and understand what works and what does not work. Through continuous improvement of processes and technology, you can establish a corporate culture in which everyone is anxious about potential security vulnerabilities.

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