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Systems Audit is a mandatory tick-off item for IT Auditors to capture the IT sanity for business operations. It gives a comprehensive dive into organization’s IT infrastructure to check for regulatory and network compliance in addition to monitor the status of disaster management plans of the company.
Thus, keeping the entire IT Team on toes is essential. Here are various methods to prepare your organization’s IT Department and Infrastructure for a detailed Systems Audit.
1. Security Log Reports
Prepare and maintain a security log for all the users and their activities using a time bar. This helps in catching cyber-attacks if attackers are cloning and disguising to be one of the organizations employees.Delete dormant accounts. Check for change in employee roles and review to delete the dormant role access.
2. Putting up a System Closure
Try to customize your systems to close for employee activities unless specifically approved for weekends. Add a stop clock for employee activities in system post a standard working time hour. Putting data entry restrictions can help identify malicious flags. This protects the system from any kinds of data breach and instils data integrity.
3. Keep Documentation in Check
This applies to both online and offline documentation. Be it details of an Anti-Virus software’s definition of virus being updated or having checklist for regular IT firewall testing, everything must be documented and provided as asked by the System Auditors. Routine compliances with valid licenses should be in place is green flag for IT Audits.
4. Security Policies and Employee SOPs
Majority of data breaches come from human error and misuse.
There should be defined IT SOPs for every employee to follow. Any restricted website access should be granted against a ticket defining the purpose and duration of access. Passwords should be defined as per policy and should updated at regular intervals. Employee must be given mandatory IT Security Trainings to help protect the organization from tail-gating and cyber masking.
5. Data Backup
Data is the backbone for every organization. Losing access to data or losing data altogether is the worst one can be hit by calamity.
Daily backup of data should be maintained with at most security. Test backup for applications. Test the data recovery process. Check the status for deleted files. What happens when someone tries to restore deleted data. Results of all these tests should be kept handy for any kind of auditor testing.
6. Disaster Recovery Plan
When a disaster strikes, how well can an organization accommodate for recovery. This being a part of data recovery, must be evaluated from all angles to minimize loss and guarantee data retraction in the decided time frame as per the plan. Maintain a Recovery Objective Deck at disposal to support the organization Disaster Recovery Plan.
7. Physical Assets and Network Performance
Downtime in IT environment can be risky as well as costly. Be it electricity outage or network outage, both have significant impact on productivity of the entire organization at one go. Have regular evaluation of CPU, RAM, Bandwidth and other technical compliances in place to overcome these challenges and have a smooth IT Audit.
8. System Upgrades and Development
Top of all, it is important to check and review system upgrades and how they are adding value to our business. Documentations and compliances must be in place to ensure security and quality of the final product used.
Thus, proper paperwork and reporting is the key to a secure IT Infrastructure enabling security protocols in place for a Systems Audit to be successful!
