Security Audits
Being fully compliant with data security regulations depends on your industry. It also depends on the types of sensitive data you’re collecting and how that data is being handled. CyberData Pros will document, audit, and communicate findings with your business to help disclose any security gaps. We have built out a unique service offering that allows us to perform automated audits without disrupting your business!
The best way to handle incidents is to take measures to avoid them entirely, and these measures are directed by audits. With that in mind, let’s look at a few specifics of how exactly these ongoing audits keep your business healthier:
- Audit: A single audit might not always detect all risks present – some issues only become apparent in trends between multiple audits. A continual audit process ensures that most every detectable risk present in a system is identified, not just those apparent at a single point in time.
- Remediation: Following the conclusion of an audit should come the process of addressing the identified risks. A common issue with said process is that the remediation efforts are not always fully effective, leaving the organization exposed still to a risk they believe is mitigated. Subsequent audits will review remediation efforts to assess their efficacy and provide guidance on how to improve them.
- Compliance: More frequent audits mean less room exists in-between for organizations to unknowingly diverge from emerging regulations and best practices. This not only simplifies the maintenance of compliance by way of lending more time to react to and prepare for new requirements, but also lends a competitive edge by allowing for quick adoption of new security and privacy best practices.
- Value: Over time your organization and the risk landscape it’s exposed to changes, and thus audits lose relevance with time. This makes recency a large variable in the value an audit brings, both internally and externally. For instance, externally it’s often found that potential partners or clients only accept audits from the last year or six months, with more recency generally preferred. Internally, timely findings in developing systems are oftentimes extremely beneficial, as it’s far easier to adjust for security early in that system’s implementation than attempting to retrofit it far afterward.
Altogether, the benefits listed above are most apparent in a continuous audit process. And these points don’t even account for the human benefits of the process, such as improving staff’s understanding of your organization’s risk posture over time or demonstrating your organization’s commitment to cybersecurity and data privacy to prospects. It’s worth remembering that security and privacy are not problems to fix, but an ongoing process of improvement.
