Technology is evolving at a tremendous pace and businesses must continue evaluating their own ability to protect precious data. To understand the current risks of technology and how to avoid them, you need to have an IT audit check.
IT audits should be conducted to evaluate and improve your IT operations and risk management. The audits also help to reveal the current state of your company data.
These IT audits ensure that your business is well-equipped to protect its data and networks. However, there are several aspects you need to cover in an IT audit and your company should ensure that nothing gets swept under the rug.
To avoid this situation, your company should create an IT audit checklist that covers all areas. To help you out, we’ve created an IT audit template that you can use to create an effective checklist.
Let’s get started!
Setting the Scope of the Audit
The first step towards creating an audit checklist for IT departments is to set the scope of the audit. Defining the boundaries of the IT audit will help your company to focus on more critical areas. It also helps avoid any confusion and misunderstandings within the organisation.
While working on setting your audit’s scope, you must try to ask yourself these questions
- Which assets and business processes require more priority?
- What risks can cause issues to these assets and processes?
- What’s the probability that the risk will take place?
- How well-equipped is your business to deal with these risks?
These questions can set the scope of your business audit. It can help the audits figure out the biggest risks to your business. After that, your company can focus on solving the issues that could cause damage to your business operations.
After you’ve set the scope of your business audit, it’s time to focus on the different aspects that should be covered. This ensures that your company is safe from threats and can run efficiently.
4 Crucial Areas You Need to Include in Your IT Audit Checklist
As technology continues to evolve, it’s crucial to focus on certain areas that pose a threat to your business data. Therefore, your IT checklists should include areas that require proper attention. This ensures that in the worst-case scenario, you can minimise losses and help your business run efficiently.
Now, let’s take a look at some of the crucial areas that you’ll need to cover in your IT audit checklist.
Anti-malware
Malware is one of the most dangerous threats to your business data, especially if it’s stored online. Hackers can gain access to your sensitive data and this could cause massive damage to your business.
Therefore, we encourage investing in cyber security services, if you haven’t already. This ensures that your business is well-equipped to deal with malware attacks, helping it run smoothly.
Vulnerability Management
During a professional IT audit, your IT infrastructure must go through scanning and remediation for vulnerabilities. This includes checking if your software is up-to-date—ensuring that your business is kept safe from threats.
We recommend hiring experienced IT professionals if you find any vulnerabilities within your IT systems. This will ensure that your business doesn’t face any issues in the future.
Disaster Recovery
Your business should be well-prepared to deal with dangerous situations. In case of natural disasters or cyber attacks, your business should be able to function effectively. Otherwise, you could face massive losses that could shut down your business.
Therefore, your business should invest in a backup and disaster recovery plan. You should work on regularly testing this plan to ensure that it’s working effectively.
Cloud Security
A large majority of businesses carry out their operations through a cloud service. Therefore, during an IT audit, it’s crucial to ensure that the service meets your data storage and privacy requirements.
You must also develop a plan for if you lose access to these cloud services. Otherwise, you may be locked out of your data, which could lead to massive losses for your business.
Rely on Redpalm for IT Audits and Health Checks Today!
This concludes the list of things you need to add to your next IT audit checklist. However, it’s crucial to note that businesses have to deal with different risks and must adjust their IT audits accordingly.
If you’re looking to conduct a secure IT audit, we highly recommend taking the help of the IT experts at Redpalm. We can conduct extensive IT audits and health checks to ensure that your business is well-equipped to run smoothly.
We also provide cyber security, technology procurement and other services to take your business to new heights. Learn more about us by visiting our services page or contacting us to book a meeting today!
