IT Security Audits

One of the main concerns for businesses today is cybersecurity. The heavy reliance on technology, networks, and communication has made security a top priority to ensure business continuity.

An IT security audit is the primary tool for assessing a company's security status concerning its IT systems, communications, and internet access. These audits help improve systems and enhance cybersecurity, which is essential to ensuring business operations and protecting the integrity of managed information.

This service is carried out by external professionals and aims to uncover potential vulnerabilities through thorough reviews of software, communication networks, servers, workstations, mobile devices, and more.

An IT security audit is an evaluation of computer systems that aims to identify errors and faults. We provide a detailed report to the responsible party that describes:

• Installed equipment, servers, software, and operating systems
• Installed procedures
• Security analysis of equipment and network
• Efficiency analysis of systems and software
• Management of installed systems
• Verification of compliance with current regulations (such as LOPD)
• Vulnerabilities that could appear during a review of workstations, communication networks, and servers

What Is It?

An IT security audit is a process that evaluates the security level of a company or entity, analyzing its processes and ensuring compliance with its security policies.

The primary objective of a security audit is to detect vulnerabilities and weaknesses that malicious third parties could exploit to steal information, disrupt system operations, or generally cause harm to the business.

What are the benefits?

If you follow cybersecurity news, even casually, you likely have an intuitive understanding of why audits are important. Periodic audits can uncover new vulnerabilities and unintended consequences of organizational changes and are also legally required for certain industries, mainly in the medical and financial sectors.

Here are some more specific benefits of conducting security audits:

• Verifies whether your current security strategy is adequate or not
• Checks if your security training efforts are progressing from one audit to the next
• Reduces costs by identifying and decommissioning redundant hardware and software discovered during the audit
• Identifies vulnerabilities introduced by new technologies or processes within your organization
• Demonstrates regulatory compliance (HIPAA, SHIELD, CCPA, GDPR, etc.)

Conducting a security audit is not solely the responsibility of large companies and corporations. Today, all types of businesses depend on technological elements and devices to carry out their processes, making periodic security evaluations essential. The main benefits of conducting a security audit within a company include:

• Improves internal security controls
• Identifies weaknesses in security systems, such as errors, omissions, or faults
• Detects potential fraudulent activities (such as unauthorized data access or internal theft)
• Helps to eliminate the company's security weak points (e.g., websites, email, or remote access)
• Controls both physical and virtual access (review of access privileges)
• Ensures that systems and tools remain up-to-date

What Are the Types of IT Security Audits?

There are various types of IT audits depending on their objectives, such as forensic, technical, regulatory compliance, or penetration testing audits, among others. Security audits can be divided into:

1. Internal and External Audits

Depending on who conducts the audit, they are classified as internal, when performed by the company’s own staff (though they may have external support or consulting), or external, when conducted by independent external companies.

2. Technical Audits

These audits focus on a specific part of an IT system. Among these are regulatory compliance audits, which aim to verify whether certain security standards are met (such as the validation of computerized systems in regulated industries), or whether security policies and protocols are being properly implemented.

3. Objective-Based Audits

These are technical security audits that vary depending on the specific objective. The most common include:

• Websites: These audits evaluate the security of websites and eCommerce platforms to identify potential vulnerabilities that third parties could exploit.
• Incident Response: These audits are conducted after a security incident or attack to discover the causes, the scope of the incident, and why it was not prevented.
• Network Security: Aims to evaluate the performance and security of corporate networks such as VPNs, WiFi, firewalls, antivirus software, etc.
• Access Control: Focuses on access controls and is linked to physical technological devices, such as security cameras, barrier and door opening mechanisms, and specific access control software.
• Ethical Hacking: Conducted to assess a company's security level by simulating an external attack (as if it were a real one) to evaluate protection systems and measures, identifying vulnerabilities and weaknesses.

What Phases Are Involved in an IT Security Audit?

To perform an efficient security audit that achieves the best results and applies improvements to enhance cybersecurity, several phases must be followed:

1. Objectives and Planning

First, it’s essential to define the objectives of the security audit. Designing an audit with the goal of validating a security standard is not the same as a technical audit to verify if the security policy is being followed.

Once the objectives are set, planning should be carried out to outline the steps to follow, the tools to use, an activity schedule, and the areas to analyze to achieve those objectives.

2. Information Gathering

This phase involves gathering as much information as possible to assess the operation of the IT systems, technologies, policies, and protocols under audit. The main channels used to gather this information include:

• Interviews with company personnel
• Review of documentation (policies and protocols)
• Analysis of hardware and software specifications
• Running tests and using tools to measure system security

3. Data Analysis

With all collected information, documentation, and the results from various tests, an analysis is conducted to find faults, vulnerabilities, and weaknesses in the systems.

4. Creating the Audit Report

The audit concludes with a detailed report of the results obtained during the analysis phase. This report should present the identified security issues and propose solutions and recommendations for addressing them.

The security audit report should clearly and concisely present the purpose and objectives of the audit, the results obtained, and the corrective cybersecurity measures to apply.

With the audit report, company management can understand the true state of their IT systems and infrastructure, as well as their security policies, and make informed decisions to improve and increase their security levels.

Companies that perform periodic IT security audits can assess the state of their cybersecurity and detect any weaknesses or vulnerabilities that put their systems and information at risk.

The cybersecurity audit report will include recommended actions for the company to take in each critical (high-risk) area identified to eliminate the associated risk. Security audits provide a more secure and agile system for responding to any external threat or internal security incident.