An information security audit is a thorough assessment of an organisation’s data processes and information security practices or infrastructure by a dedicated technical team. The auditing is required to verify that those processes and infrastructure comply with the information security regulations or standards such as ISO 27001 that apply to their organisation. Since information assets are vital for every organisation, ensuring information security management must be a priority. To help you in that, this article explains what an information security audit is in your organisation and how to successfully conduct it.
Many organisations skip the step of an information security audit because it can be time-consuming and requires staff and other resources which involves extra costs. However, these benefits explain why conducting the information security audit is essential for you as well as every other organisation.
• It reassures that your existing Information Security Management System (ISMS) is satisfactory and competent in the context of your business
• It checks that your security training programs, and staff awareness are adequate
• It uncovers potential threats or vulnerabilities to the hardware, software systems, networks, and databases
• It helps to reduce your costs by eliminating inefficiencies in the ISMS and unnecessary use of resources
• It helps to identify the risks that come up due to use of new technology, software, or IT processes
• It verifies that your organisation is compliant with the statutory and standard regulations including ISO 27001
If you realise that securing the confidentiality of your organisation’s information is crucial for building trust in your stakeholders, they will probably understand why audits are required. However, you need to conduct your audit in the correct way to get these benefits. The next section provides a step-by-step guide on how to perform an internal security audit.
The first step is about determining the scope of the audit which includes objectives and key assessment areas. To put it simply, you need to decide the criteria of the audit after considering the goals to achieve. The goals can be vast in number and so you need to classify them based on their priority and departments.
After deciding the criteria, you are also required to agree on the audit procedure. You should determine how to perform it, what the stages are, who will be involved, and what key security performance indicators to measure.
This step is about scheduling the time of the audit and preparing your organisation’s members for that. But first, you should convey to them the objectives and criteria for the audit. You need to prioritise the IT systems, processes, or areas and align your resources based on the priority list. Preparations also imply getting the tools and deciding the methodologies for examining the information security elements and infrastructure.
Interviewing the employees who work with the data processes and ISMS is also a part of the audit. Therefore, you need to decide the interview questions or prepare a survey questionnaire to collect adequate information from the audit.
When the required time, resources, and staff are arranged for the audit, you can carry out the audit successfully. One of the key requirements is proper documentation of the audit steps. It ensures that you have performed the audit with due diligence. Documentation also helps to collect accurate data or information from the assessment which your senior management can investigate further. Interviewing the employees or staff who directly work with various data processes and IT systems is a part of the audit procedure. You need to ask them questions that will reveal the efficiency level of the systems, potential security risks and problems, and improvements that can be made. Their inputs must be properly documented to remediate the information security infrastructure.
Since an audit is a continual or cyclical process and you must conduct it again after a certain interval, documentation is essential for tracking the progress of your audit. By comparing the observations with previous audits, you can understand where your information security environment has improved.
The key purpose of the audit is to find the issues in your organisation’s information security framework and address them. For that, you need to share the findings of the security audit with all the top management of the organisation. The management team along with concerned information security officials should evaluate the observations and together prepare a list of actions to fix all the identified issues.
The answers to questions such as what do you mean by an information security audit, why you need to do it, and how to perform it, are hopefully more clear to you now. An information security audit typically means checking for vulnerabilities in the IT systems, inefficiencies in the security practices, and loopholes in the preventive measures. Therefore, it involves examining the hardware, networks, IT software, and databases. In short, the audit helps in finding any flaws in your current Information Security Management System (ISMS) so that they can take corrective actions. Hence, the audit also assures continual improvement of the ISMS. While the benefits of performing the audit are assured for every organisation, you also need to follow these principal steps to conduct it successfully and realise all its benefits.
If you are planning to get an information security audit done in your organisation, Compliancehelp can assist you by providing you with dedicated internal audit services. Feel free to contact our team to get started.
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