For example, you might uncover compliance issues that can lead to fines and possibly affect client retention. Ultimately, security audits help ensure that your company is protected and that sensitive information is stored and handled appropriately.
An audit plan represents a blueprint for conducting an audit. It addresses why, when, how, where, and by whom questions associated with audit performance. A good audit design identifies all the risks involved in the operations and employs specific audit procedures to minimize them.
Thus, the corresponding objectives should identify all relevant security requirements, such as protection when connecting to the Internet, identifying high-risk areas in a computer room or assessing the overall information security level of a department.
The two elements of planning are creating an overall audit strategy and the associated plan. Following different activities like collecting client requirements and information and verifying the applicable laws is vital in preparing an audit strategy. It should align with audit objectives and contribute to the act of curating an audit work plan.
According to the international standard of auditing (ISA), an audit plan should be based on an overall audit strategy. The audit strategy must explain the scope, timing, and direction of the audit.
Let’s look at the sample below to understand better the structure, layout, contents, and overall audit plan template.
Having a punctiliously crafted audit design helps auditors achieve efficient engagement, risk mitigation, and compliance with standards set by authorized governing bodies. In addition, the company being audited should be ready and offer coordination to assist in the efficient completion of the audit.
This has been a guide to Audit Plan and its Meaning. Here we discuss its process and sample along with their examples. You may also have a look at the following articles to learn more –
A company that does not conduct compliance audits is susceptible to fines, and it might also lead to clients looking elsewhere for their needs. This type of cybersecurity audit usually examines company policies, access controls and whether regulations are being followed.
A cybersecurity audit is a systematic evaluation of your company’s information systems to make sure that they are running smoothly and efficiently. It can also save your organization money.
SugarShot can help your business stay protected by proactively identifying vulnerabilities before they cause damage.
A penetration test is unique because it involves an expert acting as a “hacker” in an attempt to breach your security systems. This type of security audit leads to insight about potential loopholes in your infrastructure. Penetration testers use the latest hacking methods to expose weak points in cloud technology, mobile platforms and operating systems.
The goal is to show whether an organization meets the laws required to do business in their industry.
By 2021, experts estimate that cybercrime could end up costing companies a staggering $6 trillion. Organizations in every industry are focused on how to improve cybersecurity, and the concern is understandable. After all, cyberattacks can significantly affect productivity, reputation and company assets, including intellectual property.
Security audits are a way to evaluate your company against specific security criteria. While this might not be the case for specific businesses, security audits can help with compliance issues in heavily-regulated industries. 2. Vulnerability Assessment.
A security audit is a systematic evaluation of the security of a company's information system by measuring how well it conforms to an established set of criteria. A thorough audit typically assesses the security of the system's physical configuration and environment, software, information handling processes and user practices.
There are several reasons to do a security audit. They include these six goals:
How often an organization does its security audits depends on the industry it is in, the demands of its business and corporate structure, and the number of systems and applications that must be audited. Organizations that handle a lot of sensitive data -- such as financial services and heathcare providers -- are likely to do audits more frequently.
Security audits come in two forms, internal and external audits, that involve the following procedures:
During a security audit, each system an organization uses may be examined for vulnerabilities in the following areas:
Audits are a separate concept from other practices such as tests and assessments. An audit is a way to validate that an organization is adhering to procedures and security policies set internally, as well as those that standards groups and regulatory agencies set. Organizations can conduct audits themselves or bring in third parties to do them.
A likelihood assessment estimates the probability of a threat occurring. In this type of assessment, it is necessary to determine the circumstances that will affect the likelihood of the risk occurring. Normally, the likelihood of a threat increases with the number of authorized users. The likelihood can be expressed in terms of the frequency of occurrence, such as once in a day, once in a month or once in a year. The greater the likelihood of a threat occurring, the higher the risk. It can be difficult to reasonably quantify likelihood for many parameters; therefore, relative likelihood can be employed as a ranking. An illustration of this would be the relative likelihood in a geographical area of an earthquake, a hurricane or a tornado, ranked in descending order of likelihood.
1 The COSO Enterprise Risk Management—Integrated Framework, published in 2004, defines ERM as a “…process, effected by an entity’s board of directors, management and other personnel, applied in strategy setting and across the enterprise, designed to identify potential events that may affect the entity and manage risk to be within its risk appetite, to provide reasonable assurance regarding the achievement of entity objectives.”
Communication —By acquiring information from multiple parts of an organization, an enterprise security risk assessment boosts communication and expedites decision making.
The objective of a risk assessment is to understand the existing system and environment, and identify risks through analysis of the information/data collected. By default, all relevant information should be considered, irrespective of storage format. Several types of information that are often collected include:
An enterprise security risk assessment can only give a snapshot of the risks of the information systems at a particular point in time. For mission-critical information systems, it is highly recommended to conduct a security risk assessment more frequently, if not continuously.
Security risk assessment should be a continuous activity. A comprehensive enterprise security risk assessment should be conducted at least once every two years to explore the risks associated with the organization’s information systems.
An impact assessment (also known as impact analysis or consequence assessment) estima tes the degree of overall harm or loss that could occur as a result of the exploitation of a security vulnerability. Quantifiable elements of impact are those on revenues, profits, cost, service levels, regulations and reputation. It is necessary to consider the level of risk that can be tolerated and how, what and when assets could be affected by such risks. The more severe the consequences of a threat, the higher the risk. For example, if the prices in a bid document are compromised, the cost to the organization would be the product of lost profit from that contract and the lost load on production systems with the percentage likelihood of winning the contract.