Discover how to prepare for a cybersecurity audit, and learn seven essential steps to enhance your compliance readiness. Understand your regulatory requirements, conduct self-assessments, and implement effective security controls to safeguard against data breaches and ensure your business’s security posture.
In 2024, the cost of a data breach hit $4.8 million, according to IBM, and signified a 10 percent year-over-year increase. Many organizations, unfortunately, wait until the last minute before a cybersecurity audit to prepare, leading to failure, compliance penalties, or unnoticed vulnerabilities.
Plus, noncompliance leads to hefty fines and potential reputational damage when failing an audit. Instead of rushing to comply with new regulations, proactively prepare to ensure your security controls are effective, you meet compliance, and you address risks before auditors find them.
Take a look at how to thoroughly prepare for a cybersecurity audit.
Common Reasons Organizations Fail Cybersecurity Audits
According to IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report in 2023, data breaches cost $220,000 more when companies cite noncompliance as a reason, and many businesses fail audits due to easy-to-fix protocols.
Basic patch management, stringent user controls, and strong password policies are just a few simple solutions to address major compliance gaps. Companies typically fail cybersecurity audits for basic reasons, including outdated documentation, weak access controls, ineffective risk assessments, and more.
Incomplete or Outdated Documentation
Many businesses fail to continuously update and record security policies, incident response plans, and access control logs. Without regular updates, policies and software quickly become outdated, opening up vulnerabilities and creating insufficient and inaccurate documentation.
For example, HIPAA compliance requires six years of documentation for employee training and access logs. Working retroactively rather than proactively on this process is extremely difficult, not to mention inefficient.
Weak Identity and Access Controls
When it comes to access controls, businesses typically suffer from overpermissioned accounts, inactive user credentials, and a lack of multifactor authentication on critical systems. This opens up your organization to one of the biggest social engineering threats — email phishing — because human error could quickly spread malware throughout your most sensitive infrastructure with overpermissioned accounts.
Also, 30 percent of data breaches come from inactive user credentials or weak passwords, making this a basic but extremely important area to address for a cybersecurity audit. Passwords like “123456789” or “NameBirthday” are easy for hackers to guess and potentially leave logins wide open to attackers.
Ineffective Risk Assessments
Many businesses struggle with no formal process to identify, prioritize, and remediate vulnerabilities. Without a structured process, companies often fail to address high-risk vulnerabilities like third-party software and expose their business to costly security incidents.
For example, only 24 percent of organizations measure third-party vendors’ security measures. This creates a gap within their own security chain from outside sources.
Unvalidated Security Controls
Perhaps your business has standard security protocols in place, like firewalls, endpoint protection, and security information and event management (SIEM) solutions, but they’re not tested against real-world attack scenarios. Regular penetration testing, red team exercises, and rule validations help ensure security controls are validated and active and follow the proper protocols.
Lack of Employee Security Awareness
A lack of employee security awareness training means staff are not trained in phishing prevention, social engineering tactics, or secure data handling. Social engineering tactics are extremely sophisticated and believable, and these cyberthreats are becoming more advanced and prolific.
For example, employees might receive a professional-looking email from the “post office” asking for credit card information because an important package is missing or from a “banking institution” because an overdue bill is about to incur a late fee. The request seems reasonable, and until closer inspection, the domain name doesn’t look fraudulent. Employees should be aware of these crucial red flags.
What should be a first line of defense turns into a highly vulnerable target if employees aren’t properly trained.
7 Steps to Prepare for a Cybersecurity Audit
Cybersecurity audits take months to prepare for, and they should be an organizationwide effort instead of just being relegated to the information technology (IT) department.
Start with this detailed cybersecurity audit checklist to begin understanding your compliance requirements, improve your readiness, and start documenting everything.
1. Understand Your Compliance Requirements
Most likely, your business is attacking one regulatory compliance audit at a time. Identify which regulatory frameworks apply to your business, such as NIST, HIPAA, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, or CMMC, and map security controls to audit requirements to ensure full coverage.
2. Conduct a Preaudit Self-Assessment
Before hiring a third-party cybersecurity firm to perform testing, conduct your own internal review. Analyze security documentation, incident response plans, and access logs, and perform a gap analysis to identify compliance shortfalls before auditors complete your business’s assessment.
3. Test Security Controls in Real-World Scenarios
The best cybersecurity protocols on paper aren’t effective if they can’t handle real-world attacks.
Conduct penetration testing, red team exercises, and phishing simulations to simulate attacks and ensure all team members respond appropriately. Ensure firewalls, endpoint detection, and monitoring tools are working effectively.
For example, test the intrusion detection system with a simulated attack, make sure the infected system is honeycombed off, and begin immediate disaster recovery operations.
4. Harden Identity and Access Management
Basic identity and access management (IAM) means the right people have the right access to do their jobs. Frameworks like the principle of least privilege, multifactor authentication on all privileged accounts, and regular user access reviews help remove inactive accounts and limit admin privileges.
For example, 4 out of 10 of companies have over 1,000 inactive user accounts, all of which increase the attack surface of your network. Imagine if your first manager, who left the company five years ago, still had access to all company files and data!
During offboarding, ensure employees are depermissioned and accounts are completely shut down. In a real-world incident, an ex-employee handed over sensitive data and details from his former employer to a competitor, Ticketmaster, illegally exposing confidential documents.
Stronger basic password protocols and suspicious login detections would’ve prevented this, in addition to comprehensive offboarding. Vet different identity and access management tools to enhance operational efficiency and protect sensitive assets, and use best-in-class software to prepare for upcoming audits.
5. Improve Incident Response Readiness
Real-world simulations thoroughly assess incident response readiness, and these are crucial frameworks that protect your business, especially during off-seasons, after hours, and holidays.
For example, have a red team launch an email phishing campaign during a major industry event, asking employees to purchase the “company CEO” gift cards because he’s “busy in trade show meetings.”
Analyze key protocols like inbox detection, employee awareness, and email filtering to see what link in the chain breaks. Ensure all testing logs are stored, analyzed, and available for forensic review during an audit.
6. Train Employees on Security Best Practices
All employees should receive detailed security awareness training. For high-risk departments like finance, HR, and IT, team members should also perform role-based security training.
For example, start with phishing detection best practices, including how to flag suspicious activity, then cover password hygiene and secure data handling protocols. New threat vectors are emerging faster than ever, especially as attackers now use artificial intelligence (AI) to perform attacks.
7. Document Everything for Audit Readiness
No matter the specific compliance framework, detailed documentation is a crucial element of regulatory readiness. Maintain detailed records of security policies, risk assessments, security patches, and remediation efforts.
For example, detail patch management logs. Monitor access control logs for unusual activity and previous compliance to frameworks like SOC 2 or ISO 27001. Use an audit checklist to track compliance status before the official assessment to ensure you don’t miss a step and all internal teams are on the same page.
Maximize Your Chances of Passing Cybersecurity Audits
A modern cybersecurity approach is a unique blend of offense and defense with proactive threat hunting, continuous monitoring, and formalized processes to protect your business thoroughly.
When it comes to passing crucial cybersecurity audits, proactive preparation ensures compliance, strengthens defenses, and minimizes audit surprises. This ensures your business stays in good standing with regulatory bodies, and it provides customers and partners with peace of mind and trust in your organization.
Depending on your business’s complexity, internal staffing, and resources, explore regulatory compliance consulting to mitigate risks and proactively prepare. Start your preaudit assessment today to identify and fix security gaps before auditors do with cybersecurity consulting.
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