IT Audit
An IT audit is the examination and evaluation of an organization’s information technology infrastructure, policies and operations. Information technology audits determine whether IT controls protect corporate assets, ensure data integrity and are aligned with the business’s overall goals.
Why do we need IT Audit?
An IT audit is essential to ensure that your system is not vulnerable to any attacks. The main objective of an IT audit is to evaluate the availability of computer systems, the security, and confidentiality of the information within the system, and if the system is accurate, reliable, and timely.
What Are the Benefits of an IT Audit?
- Reduce Risk
Risk reduction is the most important and significant benefit of an IT audit. A successful audit of your company’s IT will identify and assess the risks your IT faces, and make recommendations for actions that will be able to mitigate or address those risks.
IT audits cover a wide variety of organizational risks, including data security, confidentiality, infrastructure, and working processes. An audit may also be able to come to conclusions about how effective and reliable your IT is, and how well and efficiently it is run.
Something to understand about an IT audit is that any IT risk is automatically an organizational risk as well. These days IT is critical and fundamental to the functioning of any business, and anything that puts the smooth functioning of your IT at risk is also a threat to the effective operation of your enterprise as a whole.
- Strengthen Controls
An IT audit gives you the ability to strengthen your internal controls and improve your external security, making your organization more secure and more resilient against internal and external threats and vulnerabilities.
An IT audit will often use something called a COBIT framework to assess and strengthen controls. COBIT consists of four domains that bring together a grand total of 32 control processes which are effective at mitigating risk in an organization. The audit uses the framework to better understand the existing controls and work out what can be best adjusted and implemented to improve organization controls overall.
- Comply With Regulation
Regulatory compliance can be one of the most complex and difficult to manage elements of an IT department, particularly as there are such a variety of regulations and regulatory bodies to consider. An IT audit is a vital part of the compliance process, ensuring that the requirements of these regulations are fully understood and met.
- Facilitate Communication
The channels of communication between an IT department and the rest of an organization are often not as effective as they should be, and one of the major positives of an IT audit is to open up these channels and facilitate better communication between IT and the wider business.
Auditors become an extra line of communication, delivering reports on the functions and processes of the IT department to management, and communicating expectations and objectives from management to IT. This not only provides direct feedback both ways, but can often open up channels that were hitherto unused or nonexistent and facilitate better communication and more effective working for the future.
- Improve Governance
IT governance comes under the remit of the executives and board of directors, and is essentially designed to make sure that IT is working towards the ongoing strategic direction and stated objectives of an organization. By identifying and reducing risk and strengthening internal controls an IT audit helps improve the governance of the IT department. An IT audit will often put into place recommendations or frameworks that make the governance of an organization’s IT easier and simpler to manage, and will ensure it aligns more directly with the rest of the aims and objectives of the business.
Whatever type of organization you run, an IT audit can be an immensely powerful tool in protecting and strengthening the overall effectiveness of your business. An IT audit will have an impact on your enterprise from top to bottom, and will ensure that you are able to take a more joined-up approach, integrating IT into everything you do as a business.
Reference:
- https://compuvision.biz/connections/benefits-of-auditing-your-it-department/