40% of cyber-attacks are targeted to small businesses with little-to-no IT security systems.
An IT security audit is conducted by IT support companies to assess the overall security of your IT infrastructure. There are many ways to run an IT audit, with various IT companies providing audit packages based on business requirements and resources.
Tailored IT security audits help businesses of varying sizes to maximise their budget and cover the businesses objectives from their IT team or external resource.
Typically, the process of running an audit involves an IT specialist assessing your current IT setup and cyber security structure, and detecting any potential weaknesses that could be exploited.
There will be a set of criteria based on your IT security objectives and the expert will assess your IT systems security to understand any vulnerabilities within your infrastructure.
The names used for IT security audit types will vary; however, three kinds of IT cybersecurity audits are most commonly used.
One-off security audits are undertaken by IT experts when a one-off event occurs within the IT infrastructure – this might be the installation of new software or an IT relocation project being rolled out within the business.
An example of this could be for a small business that requires the installation of a new cloud-based piece of sales software to improve the efficiency of managing their sales flow. Here, an IT support team would audit the current sales-flow and assess the measures required to safeguard the new sales software against harmful attacks to the company’s security.
Yes or No security audits have a yes or no outcome. The criteria for these IT audits is to determine whether a company can go ahead with including a new process into their IT workflow. This audit is about finding potential blockers that cannot be overcome and would be detrimental to the company’s IT security.
Regular assessments are taken between 1-2 years to ensure that a business’s IT security is still compliant with best-practice cyber security and to assess whether they are still adequate for the business needs.
Additionally, these types of audits look to ensure that processes are being adhered to by teams within the business and that there are no risks that could hinder the overall performance of your company’s IT security.
You may not think that an IT audit is a necessity within your business. However, recently, we shared that 40% of cyber-attacks are targeted to small businesses with little-to-no IT security systems. Cyber attacks are on the rise too, with 20% of companies that have employees who work from home being targeted.
Unfortunately, the cost can be catastrophic to small businesses, with the average cost of a cyber security attack resulting in £65,000 – £115,000 in damages. Sadly, this can often spell the end for the company.
Ask yourself, can you afford this sort of outlay without your business going under as a result? If the answer is no, then implementing an IT security audit and Business Continuity Disaster Recovery plan are two critical measures to ensure you keep your company’s intellectual property safe and secure.
There are many benefits of implementing an IT security audit within your business, for example:
Security audits for IT infrastructures use a simple Plan-Identify-Report process. Naturally, there are lots of small tasks within these three phases, but for businesses trying to understand security audits, these are the three steps that are undertaken for IT security audits to run smoothly.
The planning phase of the IT security examination looks to determine the criteria for which the assessment is run. This outlines aspects such as:
The identify phase of the audit is the implementation of the security audit. This phase of the audit covers tasks such as:
The reporting phase of the audit is a more detailed report and analysis of the IT infrastructure based on the security audits findings.
Here the reporting phases identifies:
To apply for an IT Security Audit, or to learn more about the service, simply visit our IT Security Audit page. Or alternatively, to find out more about our IT Support Services here at Equity, or how we could support your business, we welcome you to contact us today.