It costs small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) $52,000 for every DDOS attack. Nearly a third of SMB cyberattacks cause system downtimes and a decline in productivity.
Robust information security management systems (ISMSs) can protect SMBs from such attacks. An effective way to ensure this is by conducting continuous cybersecurity audits.
In this article, cybersecurity auditors will discover what makes for effective cybersecurity auditing.
Without further ado, let’s get started.
Importance of Cybersecurity Audits
In the cyberthreat-filled interconnected world, cybersecurity audits are more important than ever. A cybersecurity audit checks all the digital parts of a business to determine what’s working well and what isn’t.
It also involves assessing the effectiveness of risk responses and cybersecurity incident responses. A cyber audit is a necessity for many reasons, but not limited to:
Compliance with Cybersecurity Regulations
Following cybersecurity policies, laws, and regulations makes business sense. That’s because breaking them can lead to severe fines or penalties and a tarnished reputation.
Some of the crucial regulations to comply with may include the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), or UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK-GDPR).
A cyber audit can reveal what’s missing to comply with cybersecurity regulations.
Spotting Vulnerabilities and Threats
A cyber audit can pinpoint weaknesses in a company’s network infrastructure, software, and security protocols, enabling the organization to address these vulnerabilities and prevent cyberattacks.
It also helps identify potential threats targeting susceptible assets.
Protecting Sensitive Information
Unauthorized access to a company’s data can expose sensitive information, like intellectual property and customer data, to risk of disclosure, manipulation, availability, and potential privacy invasion.
Cybersecurity auditing exposes such potential risks, paving the way for organizations to implement needed technical, administrative, and legal measures.
Managing Cybersecurity Risk Posture and Identifying Effective Risk Mitigation Strategies
Conducting thorough cybersecurity audits ensures organizations understand their cybersecurity risk posture. This allows them to identify and focus on priorities and better allocate risk-mitigation resources.
When followed by effective remediation actions, cybersecurity audits can help organizations reduce the likelihood and impact of falling victim to cyberattacks.
Gaining Stakeholder Trust
Regular cybersecurity audits demonstrate an organization’s commitment to security.
As a result, organizations can earn the trust and confidence of customers, investors, and vendors, which is crucial for business success.
Continuous Improvement
Cybersecurity audits drive ongoing security and overall business life cycle improvements. Regular audits prompt the updating of existing controls.
For instance, a retail company might discover outdated encryption protocols during an audit, leading them to implement stronger, more current measures. And as a result, protect customer information from a potential cyber-attack leading to information disclosure.
This compels organizations to improve their ISMSs regularly.
Good Practices for Conducting Effective Cybersecurity Audits
How can businesses with limited resources conduct effective cyber audits? By following and implementing good audit practices. This also allows such companies to adhere to cybersecurity regulations and avoid cyberattacks.
Here are some of the key good practices for undertaking effective cyber audits:
Define Specific Audit Objectives
There are different cybersecurity audits, each with its objectives. For example, a compliance audit ensures an organization complies with specific regulations, such as the GDPR.
Once the organization defines a specific audit objective, as in the case study, it can specify the associated audit outcomes. This will guide the scope of the audit at hand.
Use Cybersecurity Auditing Checklists
Pilots use checklists to ensure safe navigation of planes. Humans forget, and checklists help avoid unsafe omissions. It’s paramount to use cybersecurity audit checklists to check every aspect of an ISMSs, from IT infrastructure to people to processes.
Consider also using cybersecurity frameworks, such as the NIST Cybersecurity Framework.
Apply a Risk-Based Audit Approach
Organizational risks are the flip side of opportunities. For every opportunity, risks lurk somewhere and its crucial to discover them. Organizations’ aim is to focus their efforts and resources on what might affect them due to partaking in those opportunities in the long term.
This requires using a risk-based approach—a method that addresses the risks that could cause the most damage, alteration or loss of critical assets. As a result, organizations can better use their resources and minimize interruptions to their operations.
Open Communication with Stakeholders
It’s vital to involve management, staff, and other key stakeholders throughout the audit process.
Clear and open communication in cybersecurity audits ensures accurate data collection, timely security issue identification, and effective collaboration between auditors and internal teams.
This transparency fosters a thorough understanding of findings, builds trust, and aids in implementing security measures. It ensures clarity and tracking (like continual improvement logging and monitoring) of the impact of the security steps taken.
The result is an enhanced overall security posture and a strengthened sense of accountability among relevant stakeholders.
Document Findings and Recommendations
Effective cybersecurity audits may include findings, recommendations, and confirmation of effective existing security controls. Regulators may demand them to verify that an organization complies with a particular policy or regulation.
Organizations themselves require recorded means to gauge the progress of their cybersecurity efforts. This helps stay on the path of continuous improvement necessary to stay ahead of cybercrime.
Audit records and recommendations can also serve as evidence in court if an incident like a data breach occurs. For instance, they can demonstrate that the affected organization took prudent security steps to prevent the breach.
Leverage Automation
Improved technology makes it possible for continuous cybersecurity audits. Organizations can automate cybersecurity audit tasks such as vulnerability scanning, compliance management, and penetration testing.
For example, instead of manually collecting security data, can do so automatically. Human resources can then focus on more complex issues, such as:
- installing and testing new security controls
- analyzing and mitigating sophisticated threats
- developing comprehensive incident response plans
- conducting thorough security audits, and
- ensuring compliance with industry regulations
This shift allows for a more strategic and efficient use of security personnel, ultimately enhancing the organization’s security posture.
Overall, leveraging cybersecurity automation saves the time and cost of pulling information and analyze it, reduces incident response times, and enhances compliance.
Common Cybersecurity Audit Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
Cybersecurity auditing mistakes can be costly to any organization. For instance, they can leave the organization exposed to cyber threats and not comply with cybersecurity regulations.
Avoiding such mistakes is the best first line of defense. That begins with knowing common cybersecurity audit pitfalls and how to avoid them.
Here are the common mistakes made in cyber audits:
Limited Planning
This issue is the reason for the inaccurate definition of the audit scope. Inadequate planning leads to a lack of focus and direction. It complicates resource and budget allocation.
This could lead to the audit overlooking vulnerabilities and cyber risks, leaving the organization wide open to cyberattacks.
Organizations should define audit objectives to avoid wasting time, budget, and effort, and to identify all cyber risks.
Overlooking Vendor and Partner Cyber Risks
Many organizations rely on external companies for products and services. If these third parties possess weak cybersecurity, they may jeopardize the organizations they collaborate with, leading to reputational damage, regulatory non-compliance, significant disruptions to business operations, and substantial fines.
A case in point is the Target (a large U.S. retailer) data breach that occurred in 2013. The attackers stole 70 million customer records and 40 million credit and debit records.
These hackers accessed Target’s network through security weaknesses in the organization’s third-party vendor—a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) company.
The $18 million settlement fee Target paid was a drop in the ocean, considering it lost an estimated $200 million due to the breach’s impact.
This incident highlights the cascading risks posed by third-party vendors that have insufficient cybersecurity practices.
Organizations should conduct business with third parties that have proven robust cybersecurity assurance practices. Organizations need to exercise due care and due diligence before and during the engagement of third parties.
Not Following Up on Audit Findings
A cybersecurity audit can use a lot of an organization’s resources. Businesses like these may rush to wrap up the audit, toss the report in a locked drawer, and re-read it when preparing for the next audit.
This is a big mistake and a waste of resources while exposing the organization to cyber risks. Following the audit, the organization should implement recommended actions to reduce the risks.
To effectively manage cybersecurity audits, organizations should view these audits as essential investments rather than routine tasks. This requires doing the following:
- Engaging key stakeholders throughout the audit process to ensure comprehensive understanding and alignment with business objectives.
- Upon receiving the audit report, dedicating time to review findings, prioritizing actions based on risk, and developing a clear remediation plan.
- Promptly implementing recommended improvements across policies, technical controls, and staff training.
- Continuously monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of implemented measures and adapting to evolving threats and technological changes.
- Maintaining executive oversight to ensure accountability, resource allocation, and a proactive cybersecurity culture.
By following these actions, organizations can leverage audits to enhance their cybersecurity posture, reduce risks, and safeguard against potential breaches effectively.
Inadequate Involvement of Employees
Workers are often the weakest link in organizations’ cybersecurity efforts. So, companies remain vulnerable to cyberattacks if they don’t involve all employees in audits.
Cyber audits involving all employees improve employee risk awareness and reduce risk exposure to the organization.
Cybersecurity awareness training will also make sense to them and may improve efforts to curb phishing attacks.
Conducting Cyber Audits as One-Time Events
As technology advances, so do cybersecurity threats. For instance, cybercriminals can weaponize artificial intelligence (AI) to launch more sophisticated attacks.
In 2020, a phishing campaign used AI to mimic the voice of a company executive, successfully deceiving the CEO into transferring $243,000. AI-driven malware like Emotet and TrickBot has evolved to evade traditional security measures, causing widespread damage.
These examples show the need for ongoing audits and assurances guided by clear and attainable core business and security objectives. This is to address current and new threats from emerging technologies.
As a result, an audit conducted this year may not be relevant the following year. It can give an organization a false sense of security.
Cybersecurity Audit Case Study
One of the impactful ways to conduct effective cyber audits is to learn from others. Here’s a cybersecurity case study that provides important lessons:
Background Information
The healthcare sector necessitates stringent security measures and adherence to regulations and standards—both international and regional. The primary aim is to safeguard the confidentiality of patient information.
In this case study, a regional healthcare organization wanted to enhance the protection of its data and that of its patients.
It had hired an external auditor to help it identify and resolve its cybersecurity issues. The auditor spent excessive time on problem identification.
Little time went into remediating the issues identified. The healthcare provider wanted more.
So, it engaged a well-known audit firm to perform a cybersecurity assessment, aiming to close existing gaps and resolve identified issues effectively.
Audit Process
The audit scope included a comprehensive evaluation of the healthcare provider’s entire cloud security infrastructure. The firm used the Center for Internet Security (CIS) benchmark alongside its cyber risk framework for quick observations and recommendations.
The audit firm created five separate work streams to help identify cybersecurity security gaps in their client’s cloud operations.
The auditor and the healthcare provider remediated such concerns in real time, speeding up the resolution of critical issues.
Key Findings
In two weeks, the audit discovered 142 issues, of which 43 were high-risk controls like inadequacy gaps in security processes and underutilized capabilities.
Microsoft/Office 365 accounted for the greatest number of high-risk concerns.
Actions Taken
The audit firm and the healthcare organization remediated critical vulnerabilities in real time.
It also provided workshops and guidance to educate the healthcare organization’s IT team, including the security executives.
Outcomes
Reduced Microsoft/Office 365 high-risk findings to 9 open findings–an 80% decrease–in 12 weeks. Addressing these critical vulnerabilities lowered overall cyber risk exposure.
The healthcare provider and the audit firm continued collaborating to resolve 60 medium-risk findings.
Lessons Learned
Organizations can gather crucial insights from this cybersecurity audit case study to improve their cybersecurity posture. For instance:
- It’s essential to have a clear scope to measure progress and to ensure the auditor delivers the expected results.
- Resolve critical security issues as and when they’re discovered. This reduces exposure and the potential for cyberattacks.
- Use industry-leading cybersecurity auditing benchmarks, such as the CIS, Cybersecurity Capability Maturity Model (C2M2), or the Australian Essential Eight Maturity Model, to catch all critical issues.
- For successful cybersecurity audits, it’s necessary for the organization affected to collaborate with the auditor closely. This ensures the organization’s cybersecurity improvements are sustainable.
Conclusion and Next Steps
Unsecured IT or OT infrastructure and the current business operations expose organizations to potential cyberthreats. With evolving technology, cyber criminals use sophisticated means to attack their targets.
This is where developing robust ISMSs comes in, and this begins with conducting thorough cyber audits.
Cybersecurity audits act as critical tools to identify weaknesses in ISMSs. They identify security gaps and examine the current security landscape and posture. Organizations can then prepare thoroughly to face the ever-evolving cyberthreats.
Organizations need to choose an industry-leading cybersecurity framework and use it to develop a cybersecurity audit checklist.
Then, use the checklist to conduct thorough audits of their IT and business policies, procedures, infrastructure, and processes.
It’s now time to pick a robust cybersecurity framework, develop a cyber audit checklist, and conduct a thorough audit.