Healthcare professionals often use the saying “prevention is better than a cure”. No one would argue that this is also true about cybersecurity. For most companies, conducting regular cyber security audits are a key component of their prevention strategy. An audit could help a certain organization identify potential threats to their business within their IT infrastructure. In the event of a hack or other catastrophic breach, audits can also help to minimize the loss of critical data and aid with business continuity and recovery.
Why are audits typically conducted by s third party?
While it is possible to conduct audits using internal teams, it is typically considered best practice to engage an independent third party to do this work. In addition to helping to avoid conflicts among colleagues, a reputable auditor also provides a fresh perspective on your organization’s setup while bringing specialized, up-to-date knowledge of current threats and vulnerabilities.
Checklist: What to look for when auditing your systems
The following checklist is intended to guide conversations with potential auditors, and to provide a roadmap to ensure that any provider you engage knows the full scope of your organization and expectations before they begin the audit process.
1. What are your company’s assets?
From a cyber security perspective, your company’s assets are anything that has value that you want to protect. As such, this can include everything from critical company and customer data to devices, endpoints and even network equipment.
2. What are your company’s threats?
No employee wants to hear it, but when it comes to cyber security, they represent the biggest liability for many companies.
Additional threats that need to be addressed by any auditor include those represented by out of date or end-of-lifed systems, software and security patches, all of which can allow hackers to take advantage of known vulnerabilities to gain access.
3. How are these threats currently being mitigated?
Once you have identified the biggest threats to your organization’s technology security, it is also important to consider how they are being dealt with at present. Even threats that seem to be under control can become an issue if the solutions being implemented become outdated. As such, compiling a comprehensive list of solutions and providers is a critical step in ensuring that an auditor can correctly identify issues and provide recommendations for solving or mitigating them.
4. What has changed since your last audit?
For organizations that conduct audits on a less frequent basis–quarterly or bi-annually –the first three steps outlined above are likely to be part of the process each time you prepare for an audit, due to the number of variables that can change over these time periods. Even so, asking this question can be a way to identify assets, threats, or other changes that may otherwise have been overlooked. For organizations that conduct audits more regularly, meanwhile, it may be worth starting with this question to ensure that a process that can become tedious remains focused on the real goal: securing your company’s most valuable assets.
If this information is helpful to you read our blog for more interesting and useful content, tips and guidelines on similar topics. Contact the team of COMPUTER 2000 Bulgaria now if you have a specific question. Our specialists will be assisting you with your query.
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