Ease IT Reviewing Burden With A Reliable IT Audit Tool

Information technology plays a crucial role for every organization or business in this digital era. Because it has been shown to increase both efficiency and productivity, organisations spend resources (including money, employees, and time) in technological advancements. If your business has invested in information technology then it is also essential to get familiar with IT audits.

What is IT audit?

It is a process that investigates your current IT system, management, operations, applications, data usage, and more. An IT audit will evaluate whether or not the information technology that is being used to govern and secure your company’s assets. It even ensures data integrity and aligns the overall business goals.

Every auditing process differs. The typical IT audit process consists of –

1. Planning – It includes entrance meetings, preliminary research, process discussions, collecting data, and identifying the scope.

2. Fieldwork – It comprises interviews, document & process reviews, testing & verification, and audit issues or finding discussions.

3. Reporting – It involves audit report drafting, management responses, exit meeting, and distribution of the final report.

4. Follow-up – After issuing the report the follow-up process on audit findings starts. Formal memos are issued two years after the audit to involved parties.

IT audit is a time-consuming and cumbersome process at times. However, a reliable IT audit tool can help to optimize IT operations, pass compliance checks, and enhance security.

IT audit types

IT audits can be divided into five main categories.

1. System & applications – Check for reliability, efficiency, validity, and security on every activity level.

2. Information processing facilities – Verifies whether the processes are working normally or experiencing any disruptions.

3. Systems development – Verifies that the systems under development follow standard compliance.

4. Management of IT & Enterprise architecture – Check the IT management structure and process for efficiency.

5. Telecommunications – Review the network and server security for protection against possible breaches.

IT audit tool is designed to detect infrastructure and data security gaps due to many inactive users or many employees being permitted to access. In the event that the risk is recognised, corrective action is carried out in order to reduce the attack surface area.

Main objectives of IT audit

1. Evaluate existing systems and processes to ensure that they work to protect company data as intended.

2. Determine potential risks to business data and identify solutions to mitigate those threats.

3. Verity integrity and reliability of company data.

4. Safeguard every asset.

5. Establish the IT systems and connected management’s inefficiencies.

6. Check whether the data management processes comply with the IT-related policies, standards, and laws.

Your personal data is safeguarded throughout the whole IT ecosystem, regardless of its physical location, thanks to the IT audit tool. Juggling several reporting and auditing tools to collect data from cloud-based and on-premise systems is a headache. With reliable IT audit software, you can get data in an integrated and consistent manner.

Benefits of IT audit tool

Check for threat vulnerabilities

Financial transactions are conducted via cloud-based accounts or online systems. Financial transaction details of your employees and customers are vulnerable to hacking. Nevertheless, with regular IT security audits, you feel assured that the risk is reduced. Identifying the gaps helps to strategize proper security in identified risk areas.

System evaluation

IT audits allow businesses to know if they are investing in a proper system or not. It ensures the system works flawlessly and fulfills your business goals as intended. In case, there is something not right, the IT audit tool will identify it. For instance, the state of technology is advancing at a rapid rate; since you are aware of which tools and systems have become obsolete, you are in a position to improve the IT system so that it operates more effectively.

Data security 

IT auditing instills data availability, integrity, and confidentiality. It makes sure that data is safe from any kind of theft.

Strengthens controls

IT audits not just access risks but even detects and evaluates controls. For example, the IT audit tool monitors privileged account activities to determine whether any account is engaged in mistrustful activities.

IT audit tool sends an alert notification if it detects suspicious activities, so you take action before a system failure or data loss or get hit with penalties for noncompliance. So, make sure to choose reliable IT audit software for your business.