Question

What is the goal of security audits and the importance of establishing best practices within and organization?

NEED 300 WORDS

Answer 1

SECURITY AUDIT

A security audit is a systematic evaluation of the security of a company's information system by measuring how well it conforms to a set of established criteria.

A thorough audit typically assesses the security of the system's physical configuration and environment, software, information handling processes, and user practices. Security audits are often used to determine regulatory compliance that specifies how organizations must deal with information.

At its root, an IT security audit includes two different assessments. The manual assessment occurs when an internal or external IT security auditor interviews employees, reviews access controls, analyzes physical access to hardware and performs vulnerability scans. These reviews should occur, at a minimum, annually. Some organizations, however, prefer to do them more frequently.

Goal of Security Audits

• Keep sensitive data protected
• Keep compliance programs up to date (i.e. HIPAA)
• Identify security loopholes & ensure the level of security required for the type of data
• Ensure that staff are correctly following security protocols
• Implement proper cybersecurity awareness education and training
• Establish precautionary measures & procedures
• Give peace of mind to management, staff, and customers
• Make more effective security decisions based on data analysis from the audit
• Use findings from audit to create and implement new security policies and procedures
• Identify potential risks and threats that are most likely to affect your organization
• Identify and prioritize risk responses
• Better prepare the organization to protect against potential threats
• Uncovering hidden risks
• Prevent security breaches and reduce the impact of breaches
• Make smarter investments for technology, security, and software
• Reduce security problems that result from human error
• Keep technology up-to-date
• Protect against incorrect or unwanted changes

Importance of establishing best practices within and organization

• Security audits are important because they help you identify your biggest security risks or flaws in your system so you can make changes that will protect your organization from those risks.
• Starting with a security risk assessment allows corporate management and IT staff to work together. Management needs to make decisions that mitigate risk while IT staff implements them. Working together under the same risk assessment gives everyone the information they need to protect the organization.
• Regular audits can also help improve the effectiveness of your auditor as they learn more about your organization and its technology, processes, issues, and needs.
• Risk assessments provide accessible report focused on a “need to know” basis so that all involved can take the appropriate level of responsibility.
• An Organizational security risk assessment educates internal stakeholders so they can see the value of mitigating the critical risks and approve additional financial support.