What is an IT audit?

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What is an IT audit?

Explore this comprehensive guide on IT audits - uncover security risks, ensure compliance and optimise efficiency for peak performance.

Published on 13th August 2024

In an interconnected world, reliable cybersecurity isn’t just a priority — it’s a business imperative. As technology has well and truly become the main driver of effectiveness and innovation — at best — inefficiencies or — knock on wood — looming cyberthreats pose more danger ever.

Data breaches may lead to operational shutdowns, and a bad IT infrastructure can cause serious drops in productivity, resulting in huge material and reputational losses. Regular IT audits provide a proactive approach to monitor and protect your organization’s digital systems against potential threats.

With system audits, businesses ensure regulatory compliance and build trust and brand reputation by keeping customer information safe. Learn more about the importance of IT audits.

What Is an IT Audit?

IT auditing is the process of evaluating a company’s information technology (IT) infrastructure, including the accompanying procedures, policies, and devices in use, mainly for the purpose of security. Audits are designed to make sure that the infrastructure works securely, while employees adhere to corresponding security standards by using their devices correctly.

In a way, it’s similar to other inspections (like technical SEO audits), that evaluate the status of your systems, website, or any other system.

Why are information technology audits essential for businesses and individuals? Last year alone, 353 million people were subjected to data breaches. Even more alarming, this represents a 77% increase from 2022. The average data breach costs companies around $4.45 million to mitigate in 2023.

Besides the obvious material losses, companies may suffer huge reputational damage, that is often harder to remedy than updating their IT infrastructure.

The Benefits of IT Audits

Let’s take a quick look at the main benefits of regularly auditing your IT infrastructure:

Ensuring the safety and security of all the company’s technology through proper updates
Identifying obvious and potential system vulnerabilities before cyber criminals can exploit them
Maintaining and enforcing security and privacy compliance measures
Identifying inefficient IT processes and addressing them before they further disrupt workflows
Adapting your systems to evolving security standards and needs

Types of IT Audits

Depending on the size of your organization, you may run a comprehensive audit or examine different aspects of your entire infrastructure at a time. Also, depending on the IT processes you’ve implemented, there are several IT audit types you can use to double-check your security.

Cybersecurity audits: These inspections look for potential system weaknesses that hackers may exploit to access sensitive company data.
Auditing existing applications and systems: Businesses may also audit the security measures for their existing applications and systems.
Enterprise-level audits: It’s worth considering comprehensive audits, as most IT processes are more effective at scale with a defined structure. Analyzing the entire system and how it’s been organized can prove more effective in identifying potential weaknesses.
Auditing systems and applications under development: Businesses will eventually need to build new IT systems, adhering to evolving technology needs. These infrastructures should also be audited and tested to ensure they are up to par with existing security protocols.
Third-party audits: These inspections assess how third-party applications and systems perform, as well as their effect on the company’s broader IT infrastructure.
Physical IT facility audits: Examinations that assess the security measures and conditions at the IT infrastructure’s physical location.
Server audits: Inspections focusing on assessing the overall network’s security performance and whether it needs to update compliance standards.

These information technology audits aim to determine the risks associated with your IT infrastructure and find effective ways to remedy them. This could involve addressing existing issues, changing employee behaviour, or building new systems.

IT Audit: Five Key Areas

Just as with testing your website’s overall user experience, the last thing you want to do is conduct random tests and hope for the best.

IT audits should be conducted strategically by your in-house IT team or external partners, such as cybersecurity firms and IT service companies. As these audits are designed to examine the entire system’s efficacy, the strategy should consist of five key areas that also correspond with your IT team’s basic responsibilities. These include:

Examining system security
Inspecting whether your employees and experts adhere to safe IT standards and procedures
Monitoring the infrastructure's performance
Documenting the processes and creating reports
Developing new systems if necessary

While performing each of these processes, auditors have checklists that will help them evaluate the system, covering the basic steps of IT audits. However, depending on your infrastructure and needs, you may need to incorporate new areas essential for your business.

Conducting an IT Audit

Even though audits will usually take a few days, the actual process will begin long before that. As such, it’s important to consider the entire time-frame of the process and start laying out plans before you opt for scheduling an audit.

Step 1: Plan

The first major decision you’ll have to make is whether you will conduct the audit internally or whether you’ll hire an external expert. Larger enterprises with more sensitive data typically prefer the latter option.

However, for mid-sized and smaller companies, internal audits can also prove valuable and more inexpensive to plan and carry out. To enjoy the best of both worlds, consider establishing yearly internal audit protocols and opt for the help of outside auditors once every few years.

During the planning phase, you’ll need to make a few decisions:

Auditors will likely want to speak with some of your managers and employees to learn more about your IT processes. Therefore, plan to make your staff available for those meetings throughout the audit duration.

Step 2: Prepare

Once you have the basics above sorted out, it’s time to start working with the audit team to initiate the preparation process. Here’s a quick list of the things you will need to address at this stage:

Step 3: Perform the Audit

This step doesn’t need much explanation — if your plan is detailed enough, all you’ll have to do is follow each step.

However, don’t forget that even the best plans can go awry, meaning that no matter how well you laid out the audit plans, you will likely need to address last-minute issues. Don’t rush each stage and allow enough time for inspecting every area of your infrastructure. This flexibility helps address problems when they arise and ensures no critical audit aspects are missed.

Step 4: Generate Reports

Once the audit is complete, you should have comprehensive documentation, including auditor notes, suggestions, and findings. The next step should be compiling all the information into a well-structured report. Filing the report for future reference is essential.

Once this is done, create individual reports for each department leader, summarizing the evaluation, and addressing items that don’t need changing. Additionally, provide an overview of potential weaknesses identified by the audit team, categorized by their root causes:

Along with every issue, you should also include an explanation of the next steps that will be taken to address these risks. In cases where risks stem from intentional negligence, consider involving your HR team in handling the issue.

Step 5: Follow-Ups

According to a joint study by Tessian and Stanford, around 88% of data breaches are caused by human error, while an old IBM study suggests that the percentage is closer to 95.

Human error is a major contributor to data breaches, potentially hindering the implementation of new solutions aimed at mitigating the identified vulnerabilities during the audit.

It’s vital to schedule follow-up meetings with all departments to ensure that the suggested changes have been implemented. Continue meeting with them regularly to discuss progress or concerns until your next audit.

IT Audit Takeaways

IT audits are essential to keep your information infrastructure running smoothly and safely, ensuring all possible system vulnerabilities and risks are addressed and your sensitive data is out of unwanted hands.

It’s essential to make yearly IT audits a priority. Try to help your staff understand the need to adhere to safety protocols and other best practices to avoid costly and highly damaging data breaches.

IT Audit FAQs

Should you conduct audits with in-house teams or with outside professionals?

In-house teams are familiar with your infrastructure and may know about a few faulty protocols and vulnerable systems. Outside experts, on the other hand, can have a fresh perspective on things. To get the best of both worlds, conduct regular audits with your team every year, and opt for outside assistance once every few years.

What are the major consequences of a data breach?

Data breaches can result in immediate financial damage to your company and customers if you handle their sensitive personal and financial information. Mitigating the issues and implementing new systems can also be costly, however, the reputational damage may cause even bigger problems, such as reduced trust and credibility, fewer new customers, and current clientele loss.

How can you mitigate potential issues and vulnerabilities?

Depending on the type of problem, you may need to update or revamp some aspects of your infrastructure. Or you may need different security protocols such as active monitoring and frequent vulnerability testing. In other cases, enforcing safe device and internet usage practices to ensure your staff isn’t exposing themselves and your system to attacks may be necessary.