• Have you ever wondered if your company is safe from cyber attacks?
• Have you ever wondered what the damage and cost to your company would be in the event of a security breach on your data?
• Can you afford to get stuck with the production cycle following a cyber attack?
• Do you have the necessary training to deal with a cyber attack?
One of the most common risks that a company could run is to believe that its IT security solutions can be created and managed with standard risk assessments.
This approach can cause important organizational problems, since the rapid development of technology foresees the continuous emergence of new threats and, consequently, the need to always be updated as knowledge to fight and defeat them.
What is a cyber security audit?
The cyber security audit is an assessment of the state of the art in the field of IT security.
This analysis allows you to determine how and why certain technologies are used within your company. This also allows you to create objectives and parameters, which give you the possibility to:
• Definition of security standards: decide what your security parameters are and how they will be communicated to everyone at your company.
• Follow the rules and laws: the auditor will indicate if the IT solutions are compliant not only with your standards, but with external regulations (including mandatory).
• Be up to date: the audit will identify any gaps in security measures. You will then be able to correct whatever is necessary in order to improve your current system
• The auditor will be able to offer a wide range of knowledge and experience, which allows them to effectively identify security flaws and potential areas of breach of your IT infrastructure.
The success of your audit will, however, depend on your ability to communicate with your auditor. If the auditor is not granted access to the types of data he needs promptly, it will take longer, which increases costs and could produce erroneous results.
What risks do we face?
During an audit, after deciding on the most valuable resources and processes for the company, it is necessary to identify what constitutes a threat to them.
This is a critical step in the process, as you may have to go through anything. From protecting employee passwords to data breaches to the threat of disasters such as fires and short circuits (especially in the case of attacks on IoT devices). The list could be practically endless, as you will never be able to protect yourself from every possible threat.
As long as you put what is absolutely crucial to the day-to-day running of your business in the cybersecurity audit, you are taking all reasonable steps to protect your employees and your business from potential cyber threats.
We’ve listed some of the most common dangers below:
• Employees: if your employees do not act as your first line of defense, the integrity of the entire infrastructure will be threatened, like a chain whose weakest links fail. Ask yourself: Are my employees trained in cybersecurity? Could they identify suspicious activity and follow defined security protocols?
• Phishing: Phishing attacks are a major culprit when it comes to data breaches. Many phishing scams are even capable of bypassing predefined security measures, which is why it is important that your employees are trained to detect this type of activity.
• Internal Threats: Nobody wants to think that an internal staff member can or wants to harm their business, either accidentally or maliciously. Unfortunately, however, it happens. And it’s a fairly common problem.
• Distributed Denial of Service Attacks: A DDoS breach essentially attacks a target (commonly a web server), overloads it, and prevents it from functioning as it should. This situation could manifest itself with e-commerce websites.
• Weak passwords: Most data breaches have been attributed to weak passwords. Weak or illegally acquired passwords are the most common technique used by hackers to access a network.
• Malware: Malware could represent a variety of different threats, such as Trojans, spyware, worms, and the growing danger of ransomware.
• Third-party devices: If you allow your employees to connect their devices to WiFi or the use of USB sticks, you may unintentionally weaken your security protocols.
Are the current measures working?
Once you have identified the threats you may face, you will need to assess whether your current security measures are capable of defending your IT infrastructure.
At this point, all security measures should be evaluated to identify weaknesses.
How can I use the results of the cybersecurity audit?
At the end of the visit, the auditor will be able to tell you with absolute certainty where and how to intervene to resolve the problems encountered and, if you deem it appropriate, he will be able to intervene to secure your IT systems.