Security Audits: What You Need to Know to Protect Your Business

We use checklists to ensure we're hitting every step in meeting a goal. For example, I make a list so that I don't forget anything when I go to the grocery store. Surrounded by shelves full of products with colorful labels, it's easy to lose track of items that I need, especially if they don't relate to whatever meal I'm cooking this week.

However, just because I’m making baked chicken thighs this week doesn't mean I won't be impacted when I run out of mouthwash. That's why Iauditmyself before I leave the store by comparing my list against what I have in my cart. Did I get everything I need? Is there anything I need to push to next week's list?

安全审核是一种保障，就像我交叉检查杂货清单一样。安全审计建立了一组标准，组织对抗，以确保他们符合内部安全政策并遵守外部法规。

Why do security audits matter?

在我们相互联系的世界上,安全是一个常量t concern. The more complexity in an IT environment, the more vulnerabilities that can exist. Security audits combat this trend by serving as a time-bound commitment to cross-check systems for risks.

By examining the security posture of the entire organization, these audits identify gaps in existing defenses, processes where employee training can be improved, and opportunities to create new security policies. They serve as a litmus test for the effectiveness of existing strategies and highlight new areas of focus for the security team.

审核过程对于确保您保持对组织不同领域的可见性也很重要。审计使组织负责，就像我找到所需的一切的杂货清单一样。如果我只避开了通常的购物习惯，那么不可腐烂的产品（例如漱口水和洗衣）就会被忽略。

政府机构或外部机构也可能需要审计来维持您的组织的认证，例如例行审核，以确保遵守《公平，准确的信贷交易法》（FACTA）。这是一项联邦法律，该法律规定了公司如何处理美国公民的财务信息。

Routine Audits vs. Event-Based Audits

安全审核是公司保护其数据和资产的长期战略的重要组成部分。bob全站app这意味着应进行审核at leastan annual basis, but a higher frequency is advisable to adjust security practices sooner.Cybersecurity best practicesare evolving as technology advances, and frequent audits will ensure your organization is keeping pace.

In addition to routine audits, experts recommend that your organization performs security audits after an attack or major update. Both scenarios are considered significant events.

In the case of an attack, such as a data breach, the audit will focus on identifying exactly what happened and what wentwrongto allow the leak. Naturally, your team will also emphasize fixes to prevent another breach from happening.

After a major update, such as the installation of a new tool or a data migration, your environment will be significantly changed from when the last audit was conducted. In this case, an audit is a safeguard against new vulnerabilities that may have been introduced with the large-scale change.

However, given the time and resources a full security audit requires, it's important to define the impact level of an update that would initiate an audit. This prioritization ensures you are allocating your security team's resources wisely.

1. Internal Security Audit

内部安全审核由您组织内的团队成员进行。您将对内部审核，驱动它的团队成员以及专门用于其流程的资源有最大的控制权。bob体育苹果系统下载安装

Naturally, you will use the internal approach for your routine audits. However, leveraging a third-party security audit is also worthwhile since the external organization will have a more objective view that can lead to new findings.

2. Second-Party Security Audit

第二方安全审核是当您的组织对供应商进行审核以确保其安全惯例足够，以使组织中的网络攻击或违反不会影响您的安全性。例如，确保网站上的插件安全，以便违反生产该插件的公司的不良演员无法将其用作网站和网络的后门。bob全站app

3. Third-Party Security Audit

A third-party security audit (also known as an external audit) is an audit of your company run by a third-party organization that has no affiliation with your business (to ensure unbiased results).

Many federal regulations — such as the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) — require audits by third parties before awarding certifications to organizations. In the case of FedRAMP, the third-party certification shows that a technology vendor meets security and compliance baselines before it is vetted by an authorized federal agency for full certification.

Security Audits and Additional Security Evaluations

如我们所见，有三种不同类型的安全审核。将安全审核与您的组织可能执行的其他安全评估区分开来，也很重要。

安全审核与网络安全审核

Cybersecurity audits are a subset of security audits focused specifically on the information systems within an organization. Given the digital environments most companies are working in, they might seem synonymous with security audits. However, focusing only on cybersecurity would be an oversight.

For example, your IT environment may be secure, but if someone can walk through the front door of your office and access a computer with administrator-level privileges, then that's a critical vulnerability that needs to be addressed. Security audits that examine both the physical and digital workplace will cover the full spectrum of potential risks and compliance issues.

Cybersecurity Audit Checklist

The cybersecurity audit checklist will closely mirror the security audit checklist covered in the next section. However, it will focus more on digital security practices, so we have included a checklist below to help you track these differences:

1. Identify goals and assessment criteria.
2. List potential threats.
3. Assess staff training on digital security.
4. Pinpoint risks in your virtual environment.
5. Examine business practices against security policies.
6. Evaluate data security strategy.
7. 检查主动监控和测试方法。
8. 根据发现更新安全实践。

安全审核与漏洞评估

Vulnerability assessments are checks of software and IT environments to determine if existing security rules are performing as intended. For example, a user without administrative access should not be able to launch the company's HR software and delete another user. A vulnerability assessment would attempt this unauthorized action to see if the user is blocked from initiating this action or how far they can proceed if not.

Security Audits vs. Penetration Testing

Penetration testing focuses on the different ways a bad actor could attempt to access internal systems. Security teams will often run these tests as if they are the bad actors, starting from the outside and trying to work their way into an organization's network. Penetration testing proves whether existing tools and procedures are providing adequate protection and uncovers gaps for the security team to plug.

Vulnerability assessments and penetration testing may be conducted as part of a security audit, but your security team will also perform these evaluations to further examine risks identified from your audit or as standalone tests, so it's important to understand the distinctions.

安全审核清单

Now that you understand what security audits are and why they matter, let’s run through a checklist of different focus areas.

1.确定您的目标和评估标准。

命名目标将帮助您的团队确定您要通过审核实现的结果。目标还设定了基准测量组织的当前安全姿势。

Assessment criteria will serve as signposts to different areas for your team to examine. Having established criteria allows your team to evaluate every system and security process against predefined metrics to ensure consistency in analysis for your reporting.

2.列出潜在威胁。

Depending on the industry you work in, threats to your organization may be different. For example, a government agency may be targeted by state-sponsored hackers more often than a small legal firm. Naturally, it makes sense to identify the most relevant threats to your organization so you can fine-tune your defenses and stop them.

This activity will also help your audit team define the scope of your audit and better search for vulnerabilities in the later stages.

3. Assess employee training.

Employees form another part of your defenses, and many cyberattacks target them specifically through phishing and social engineering. This means that adequate security training is critical when equipping your employees to recognize threats and respond.

Part of your audit should examine what security policies are in place for employees and if they understand and react appropriately to these rules. If there is any gap in your employee's knowledge or compliance, then you should address this gap with updated training or new courses in the final stage.

4. Pinpoint risks in your environment.

In this stage, your audit team will dive deep into your physical and digital work environments. They will start with a full inventory of existing systems, tools, and environments (digital and physical) then compare against current security policies.

都是系统及时了解最新补丁吗? Are there unidentified devices or unauthorized applications on the network? These findings will be cataloged, and this data will inform your strategy changes in the next stage.

常规系统审计另一个好处是,they often identify software that is no longer in use or multiple tools that have overlapping use cases. For example, one team is using Slack while another is using Microsoft Teams. Not only does consolidating tools reduce costs, but it also reduces the number of systems to audit and removes potential intrusion pathways.

5. Update security practices.

Now that you have a complete picture of where your organization's security practices stand, implement solutions to address the risks you've discovered. These fixes should be prioritized based on the impact on employees' workflows, severity of the vulnerability, and resources required.

For example, a low-impact change such as requiring routine password updates will not demand entirely new tools or system overhauls and can prevent bad actors from moving laterally between systems if they compromise one employee's password.

However, a fix that is resource-intensive but addresses a major vulnerability is still important. You'll just need to ensure you've given adequate planning to a smooth rollout for your employees. Tools lessen the burden on your security team for many of the more manual processes of the security audit.

安全审核工具

Security audits are a large undertaking. If your organization has never conducted one before, it can be intimidating to consider all the activities you'll need to perform. Fortunately, there are tools custom built to aid with the security audit process. We'll overview a few here.

1.Nmap

价格: Free

NMAP是一种开源工具，旨在快速扫描大型网络。NMAP使用RAW IP数据包来确定有关网络的数十个特征，包括可用主机，这些主机上的可用服务以及正在使用的防火墙。它在所有主要操作系统上都得到了支持，并提供了其他工具，以更多地了解扫描结果，例如NDIFF比较当前和以前的发现以识别模式。

2.Openvas

价格: Free

Image Source

OpenVAS是一种开源漏洞扫描仪。它提供未经身份验证和身份验证的测试，以检查跨Internet协议的内部和外部网络利用。可以使用其他插件来优化组织的唯一用例，其100,000多个网络漏洞测试不断使用其母公司Greenbone Networks的威胁智能进行微调。

3.Metasploit

价格: Free with custom paid plan available —contact Rapid7 for pricing

Metasploit is an exploitation testing framework designed to facilitate the tasks of attackers. Security teams use this tool to test vulnerabilities they have identified against a demo environment configured to match their network to determine the severity of the vulnerability. A major advantage of Metasploit is that it allows any exploit and payload to be combined in tests, offering more flexibility for security teams to assess risks to their environment.

Metasploit is supported on both Unix and Windows.

4.Netwrix Auditor

价格:免费试用带有付费计划

Netwrix Auditor is an auditing tool for IT systems designed to consolidate discovery and reporting. It identifies sensitive data across your systems and records user permissions and activity around this data. Netwrix Auditor also provides risk assessments to identify weaknesses and automated reports of findings, including reports tailored to specific regulatory requirements and industry standards.

Conducting Your Security Audit

Now that you know what a security audit is, what to look for during an audit, and tools that will support your audit, the next step is to build your own security audit strategy. The scope and frequency of your audits will depend on what makes sense for your organization. For example, if you have a small security team, then less frequent audits may be necessary until you can add additional personnel or tools to automate processes.

The most crucial factor of a security audit is that you do it regularly. Any audit strategy will pay dividends by providing a better picture of your organization's security posture and where to focus your efforts to strengthen your defenses.