In this time and age, you can never be too safe. No matter how big or small your organization is, cybersecurity is essential. Primarily because hackers and criminals nowadays can be less picky.
For your business’s safety, systematically reviewing your data, device security, and network can be crucial. It can allow you to learn about your business’s potential security risks –hopefully before any breaches occur.
Therefore, cybersecurity audits are highly recommended for businesses of all sizes.
What Is An External Cybersecurity Audit?
A cybersecurity audit is a complex process made up of several parts. In short, the process reviews all of the systems and software your business uses every day. It can include data, procedures, employees, third-party software, policies, and hardware, among other things.
Getting a cyber-security audit from a reputable company like Cytelligence can have several benefits. In the end, the report will lay out the details of your strength and weaknesses. Not only that, but they can also help you safeguard your systems with a detailed plan.
Is There A Right Time To Conduct A Cybersecurity Audit?
Business owners wonder whether there is a good time to conduct a cybersecurity audit. The answer is yes and no.
Having a brand new system, or just pieces of hardware, processes, or software, justifies an audit. The reason is, introducing new elements to your system can have certain unforeseen effects. Therefore, you should consider having an audit.
Furthermore, having an annual audit to ensure all of your systems are updated and secure doesn’t hurt as well.
While some things warrant a cyber-security audit, you can have an external team look through your system at any time. It will undoubtedly make you feel safer.
How Expensive Are External Cybersecurity Audits?
Business form to make profits. That’s why they want to minimize their costs. Therefore, businesses of all sizes want to know how much a cyber-security will cost them. Even though it’s beneficial, spending money is never easy.
While giving you an accurate figure is impossible, you can look at some factors that affect the pricing. Primarily, the size of the organization is the leading cause of varying prices. Then, the complexity of your IT infrastructure will be taken into account.
These two factors determine most of the costs. Other than that, you will have a choice. For upgrading your systems’ security, you will have to pay extra if there is a need.
How Is An External Cybersecurity Audit Conducted?
An external security audit shouldn’t be much different from an internal one. An external cybersecurity audit’s entire purpose is to have fresh pairs of eyes taking a look around.
However, the external security teams may have more experience and know the latest faults in various systems. Therefore, they generally conduct a more thorough audit to find the weaknesses in your system.
The necessary steps of a cybersecurity audit are:
- Gathering data and communicating with your internal team about their work. This gives a better idea of what they need to do and maximize efficiency
- The team will need to compile a list that defines the audit. That means writing down all of the things that are essential to your business. These would also be the things you would spend the most time and money to recover in the event of a breach.
- Now, the team should identify all the possible threats to those assets or essentials.
- Then, the audit team should assess the current security measures and check their effectiveness.
- Finally, they make a priority list of the necessities they need to tackle. They also make an action list to target the areas that need improvements and how they can improve them.
