Published on August 31st, 2018 | by Guest

IT Audit Mistakes That Should Not Happen

The IT audit is so often seen as being just a waste of time. It is the IT personnel that normally spend most time, energy and effort in conducting the smallest detail of any audit. Unfortunately, many professional believe that this is an investment that is simply not necessary.

All security audit services argue that this is not the case. Any mistake in the security system can lead to huge problems for a company. In various cases there were firms that ended up in bankruptcy due to a faulty IT security system being in place. The biggest IT audit mistakes mentioned are presented below. They have to be avoided at all costs and complete seriousness should be placed into making the IT audit as efficient as possible.

A Lack Of Knowledge

It is often seen that the auditor actually knows more about the IT implementation and environment used by the audited company than the people that work there. A lack of knowledge about proper technology environments stands out as a huge mistake. The entire IT audit can be haywire because of it.

We often see CIOs not identifying IT technology, people that use assets and processes. As a common example, it is often seen that some ground level professionals do not know about an old server that is used somewhere in the company. This is why that server is never protected or upgraded.

Manual Interventions

IT systems and compliance requirements are complex and highly interconnected. The entire IT department needs to use technology in order to set up tracking, implement documentation, configure servers and much more. Instead of producing the reports in a manual manner for the auditors, it is possible to use specialized software. Everything here boils down to automation. Manual interventions are often flawed so smart CIOs implement as much automation software as possible, as long as it is truly modern.

Lack Of Challenging Capabilities

So many CIOs do not have the attitude or the capability to fight before the software audit vendor. IT leaders and CIOs have to be knowledgeable and they need to track the entire audit process to see progress. These specialists need to be completely ready to question anomalous findings and changes.

Remember that the software vendor audits can easily translate into really high extra expenses through penalties or license costs. You can avoid so many of these by simply being aware of everything that happens during audits. Prevent the additional expenses by having the knowledge needed to actually challenge auditors.

Lack Of Action

After the audit report was offered, different red marks appear. You need to act as fast as possible to correct potential problems. The auditors will often closely follow up in order to check if the compliance gaps were actually solved. If the management or security team just ignores the problems, nobody is going to get a benefit. As the auditors come back, extra penalties are going to appear and more expenses lead to lower profits. In extreme cases, not acting in time can even lead to auditors stopping operations.

Tags: IT, tips and tricks