Five reasons you need an IT audit

So, you’ve set up your organization – a dream that you’ve wanted to achieve for a long time – and it’s starting to grow at a great rate. You’ve got the teams and the people in place you need to take advantage of your business success. You’ve got everything ready… but have you done an IT audit recently?

Being on top of your IT strengths and weaknesses is important for your brand, as you should know what you need to protect yourselves from specific issues and what equipment and software you have at your fingertips. Here’s why you need to know what those problems are, so they can be resolved before any issues arise.

You can evaluate your system

By conducting an IT audit, you will know whether you are investing in the correct systems or not. You can find out if it is working correctly and meeting your objectives for it. However, if there are problems, then an IT auditor may suggest what you could put in place to make your system more efficient.

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See if you’re at risk to threats

From sensitive customer and employee details to information about your financial transactions, this will be vulnerable through your IT system – and, although there will always be a risk, an audit will assure you that your brand is working with the lowest possible risks. An audit also gives you the opportunity to plan and put in place any security strategies you need for higher-risk areas.

An IT consultant will be able to have a look at your operations and analyze where you should be with your technology. With an audit, they can check if your system is secure, maintained, and cost effective.

Check if you’re compliant

If you don’t have an IT audit, then your company won’t be able to prove that it adheres to regulatory compliance to laws and standards. Reports that are generated after an audit will show where you are with how compliant you actually are, and where you need to concentrate. Regular IT auditing will mean that your company could be saved from legal problems and fines.

You have an audit trail

If you are subject to an investigation, then your auditing means you’ll have a trail of events that will say how – for example – a change you make today will depend on a previous permissions amendment. Creating such trails and finding the correlation between certain events is also part of the auditing process. You’ll also be able to see the value of your changes, plus a date stamp showing when they were implemented.

There are a range of status reports available

There are a number of reports that can be generated for an IT audit, which can help you oversee your overall configuration. This can include:

• Security reports: to highlight certain security issues
• Comparison reports: to show the status or property of objects
• State reports: giving the status of objects on a specific date
• Modification reports: what changes have been made