The IT security audit is one of the first steps to take to identify your security breaches and thus protect the daily lives of your employees, your data and your information systems (IS).
Indeed, how can you design your security policy without a clear and global vision of your current level of security, without having analyzed the state of your IS at a given moment? Security breach, update not carried out, configuration problem, lack of awareness… many causes of breaches are to be considered within your organization. It therefore represents the starting point for identifying the security problems and possible vulnerabilities to which your company is exposed.
Why carry out an IT security audit?
Security auditing is a methodical, independent and documented process of obtaining objective evidence while evaluating it impartially, to determine the extent to which the audit criteria are met. Thus, an audit makes it possible to establish a review, an inventory, a complete inventory of the security of an audited IS.
The health crisis linked to the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the digitalization of companies and has radically transformed the digital environment. These upheavals were, in fact, exploited by cyberattackers via, for example and in a non-exhaustive way, mass or targeted phishing campaigns, exploitation of uncorrected vulnerabilities, exploitation of remote access with little or no security. .. offering them a larger playing field filled with players who are not fully aware of the existing risks. The audit is one of the means of testing an IS and ensuring its level of security.
Each organization must secure its IS in an appropriate and proportionate way. Carrying out security audits on targeted perimeters makes it possible to guard against possible vulnerabilities, to know one’s strengths and weaknesses – to correct them or assume them – but above all to know one’s position in the implementation of one’s security policy.
How is an IT security audit carried out?
A security audit is built around three implementation phases. The first phase is that of the initialization where the sponsor (the one who orders the audit), the auditee and the auditor clearly define the limits of the audit, its scope and the methods of execution. This step is then followed by the realization where the technical and/or organizational work is carried out to finally give way to the last step, the restitution. This takes shape through the drafting of the audit report containing a summary of the results obtained, the various points observed, the countermeasures, the recommendations and, of course, the action plan to remedy the vulnerabilities discovered.
Each auditor must pay particular attention to the editorial quality of their work. Indeed, the report resulting from the audit must be rigorous, relevant, precise, methodical and pragmatic. Each audit carried out must be a source of high added value and of irreproachable quality at the best of the state of the art in the relevant field of the service.
What scope and types of company is a security audit aimed at?
Company LAN, web, on-premise, cloud, physical security of premises… Information (ANSSI), concerning security audits, different activities can be considered: architecture audit, configuration audit, organizational and physical audit, source code review or intrusion tests. Each of these audits covers an aspect of cybersecurity through a given scope. A security audit can therefore apply to any perimeter. It suffices beforehand to clearly define the limits and the outline.
Cyber risks no longer spare any company or sector of activity, regardless of the number of employees. As part of a security policy, carrying out an IT security audit remains essential for all companies, from VSE-SME to large industry. This preventive approach will make it possible to detect the main flaws in the infrastructure and its computer equipment.
Can a security audit impact the proper functioning of your business?
Even if the technical tests are non-destructive – involving no interruption of service, modification or deletion of data, they can nevertheless disrupt the nominal functioning of the targeted systems, infrastructures and applications – despite a proven experience and methodology of execution.
Among the possible disruptions, overconsumption of bandwidth, requested equipment experiencing behavioral difficulties, application availability causing crashes and instabilities are to be considered over the given period of the audit. However, it is important to note that security audits are carried out by competent and qualified personnel, and that each tool is qualified in an internal laboratory before being used on a production IS.
Before any security audit, it is obviously advisable to provide data backups (directories, databases, etc.). Finally, environments dedicated to audits, aligned with production, are recommended to ensure that all the tests carried out have no impact on your company’s business.
How can you be sure that the results encountered will not be disclosed?
PASSI qualified service providers – Information Systems Security Audit Service Providers – meet the various requirements of ANSSI, including in particular a requirement of ethics and a guarantee of the confidentiality of the data exchanged and evaluated. In addition to guaranteeing you an ethical approach from their expert teams.
ANSSI speaks, in fact, of the assessment of trust. Whether for products or services, trust is assessed as part of a qualification process and its monitoring. PASSI-qualified consulting firms thus undertake to respect over the long term a set of criteria and responsibilities taken from ANSSI – such as the maintenance of skills for service companies.
You are then assured that all flaws, vulnerabilities or other discoveries during the audit will not be disclosed outside of the persons authorized to know about them.
Cybersecurity: don’t postpone, get started!
A company security audit is often necessary before concluding an agreement, whether for an insurance contract or a due diligence step during a fundraising. Thanks to the security audit, the stakeholders have an overview of the security status of the company and the possible threats that could weigh on the functioning of the company – data theft, encryption, service interruption… – and by definition on its valuation.
But it is important to remember that a security audit is a snapshot of the analyzed IS. This photo is a representation of the IS at a specific moment, which does not make it possible to follow the evolution of the environments – cohabitation of different environments, cloud and on-premise infrastructures… – nor of the uses made by the users – opening of a breach without their knowledge through the phenomenon of Shadow IT for example. Evaluate, patch, prevent and raise awareness… In the current cyber context, to fully secure your sensitive data and work environments, cybersecurity must be thought of as a whole.