Factors that Impact IT Security Audits

In any business setup, it is vital that you pay attention to accurately recognize and talk about risk exposure. This holds even more importance when it comes to security and audit managers who go on with cyber audits.

Here are the key factors you need to lay emphasis on when understanding how they impact security audits. This also encompasses sampling and coverage, audit accuracy, resources, and costs as well as timeliness.

Having to manage a crushing workload

Resources are pulled to a breaking point when workloads increase. This also happens to be true when the timeliness of assessments falls under immense pressure from compulsory requirements that fall on businesses. This has a direct impact on the welfare of your team members which can go on to become a compliance problem. This enhances risk exposure. One strategy that helps you through this is digital transformation. This minimizes human intervention in repeated and overworking processes. This works to streamline workflow so that transactions are customer-driven and automatic.

Audit frequency is another aspect

Another factor that impacts an IT security audit is audit frequency. A majority of organizations perform audit checks at least once every year. Owing to the fact that the environment of cybersecurity is ever-changing, it can be uncertain to properly define the position of an organization’s security levels. Cyber attacks mount within seconds while defensive processes are constant. It is highly possible that over time, an environment can move from a secure position. Annual or quarterly audits may be too rare to offer a good and dependable view of the risks involved.

Governance and regulations

There is a steady rise in the pressures that are applied to business owing to laws and regulations. This includes the privacy requirements of GDPR. These laws impact IT areas. This is true owing to the volume of work and dealing with cybersecurity in operations, marketing, finance, HR, and audit as well as compliance functions. It is essential that you inform a wide range of stakeholders about the security posture of the organization as well as any actual or potential breaches.

Audit sampling is another factor

Conventionally, audit processes made use of sampling. This proves to be effective when recognizing faults or errors in processes and controls. You can look at a few representative examples, examine them, and find the most probable error rate or how it can fail. From the perspective of cyber security, however, the error condition is usually a forced act. Risks crop up owing to human failings, oversights which are then exploited by an attacker as they look for vulnerability.

Improving and enhancing IT audits

In order to be able to tackle hidden cyber vulnerabilities and ensure they are not masked or missed in any way, you need to have the right tools in your arsenal to ensure cyber resilience improves. It is important to obtain audit tools that ensure you can regular audit cycles can be supported. The tools can help collect data and put together reports with minimal if any human intervention. This offers support to stakeholders as well as stands true to regulatory requirements.

All in all, it does not matter what kind of regulation, framework, or standard you are auditing against, a specific set of security controls exist. This encompasses application patching, application whitelisting, restricting administrative privileges, operating system patching, multifactor authentication, having daily backups, and user application hardening. So you see, many things can affect an information security audit. It is up to you to navigate through this and find the best tools to help you out with this. Above all, see that you get in touch with a good and experienced professional who can help you out with this.