The Internal Audit Checklist For Security

Internal audit checklist for security is an integral component of auditing your organization’s processes, helping identify areas for improvement while assuring you adhere to best information management practices.

Step one should be to conduct an inventory of the personal information holdings held within your organization, including hardcopy records and internal files. Next, identify each resource’s purpose and usage.

1. Data Security
Data security involves safeguarding sensitive information against unwarranted access and breaches, employing various technologies, business processes and organizational practices designed to keep hackers at bay.

Internal audits enable your organization to be proactive about improving its security posture and staying aware of new threats, while simultaneously identifying areas in which your current systems may not provide adequate protection, such as having weak password policies or outdated cybersecurity software.

Once you’ve identified an area of weakness, make a plan to address it. For instance, if an internal audit reveals that many employees don’t have up-to-date software updates installed on their work devices, your remediation plan may include implementing device management tools like Kandji or Fleetsmith company-wide in order to enable automatic updates for all employees’ devices and thus minimize exposure risks for data breaches in future.

2. Risk Assessment
Conducting an internal audit requires an evaluation of your company’s security and vulnerability risk. From potential cybersecurity attacks to gaps in physical security, any of which could have resulted from human error, willful neglect or simple oversights should be examined thoroughly in order to properly assess them.

Begin by listing all of the assets that need protecting, such as hardware and software, databases, and internal documents. Next, identify potential hazards that could threaten them. After compiling a comprehensive list, evaluate each hazard by considering both its likelihood and impact on your organization (risk probability and criticality).

Risk cannot always be completely eliminated, but you can mitigate them through controls that reduce them. After carefully analyzing each risk, create a plan to address them; assign each issue a primary owner along with an action timeline so the appropriate team can take swift action on each matter.

3. Policies and Procedures
An effective security audit requires multiple tools for success, so it’s vital that you develop policies and procedures specific to your business in order to minimize errors during an audit.

Policy and procedure documents serve as guides that outline what employees can and cannot do within your organization, while policies must include strategies for any challenges encountered while implementing those documents.

Employees should avoid clicking any suspicious links that lead them to malware that infiltrates your computer system and compromise it, which could steal information, track movements and damage files.

Many of the risks identified during a security audit can be reduced with proper implementation of commercial security systems like firewalls and intrusion detection systems, provided your employees know how to use them correctly.

4. Training
No matter your industry or size of business, an information security audit is an integral step towards protecting customer data and cyber threats. An internal security audit allows your team to quickly identify any gaps in security practices caused by new technologies, employee errors or changes to processes and procedures that have resulted in gaps within security measures.

Integrate training into your internal audit checklist for security to keep employees up-to-date with best practices in information security. This training should cover topics such as encryption, hashing and tokenization techniques used to protect data at rest or transit.

Not to be taken for granted, no checklist can guarantee total security; rather it must be evaluated, adjusted and improved upon continuously. For an internal audit of your company’s processes that includes an in-depth internal review, try Process Street’s free business process management tool that allows you to document all policies and procedures in checklist form.