IT Security Audits: Why Your Business Needs a Digital Health Check

04 February 2025

Today, organisations heavily rely on the internet and related services to run across nations. And that's why IT infrastructure is an important part of any organisation. However, this reliance on the internet and technology has also created organisational vulnerabilities. It makes such organisations prey to cyber attackers who are sitting on science and trying to access your organisational data. So, how can you deal with them? There are multiple ways, but you should know about IT security audits to be safer. Yes, an audit which makes your IT infrastructure secure. Let's learn about it in detail with this blog.

What is An IT Security Audit?

An IT security audit is an audit of infrastructure, policies, procedures, and practical aspects related to information technology in an organisation. This type of audit is important as cybersecurity is becoming increasingly crucial for an organisation that has IT needs and deals with data of any kind. But what are the Benefits of IT security audits? Well, there are many, and below, we are unravelling them individually.

What are the benefits of IT security Audits?

Now, let's look at the benefits of IT security audits for an organisation and how they help make an organisation secure and reliable among its customers and stakeholders.

Identifying Vulnerabilities

An organisation has multiple IT processes, and each process increases the risk of compromise by being an option for cyber attackers. However, a cyber attacker must find a vulnerability in the IT process to take advantage of it and hack into the system. That's where the role of IT security audit comes in. These audits help you point out the vulnerabilities in the processes, systems or network and allow you to get rid of these vulnerabilities. Hence, you can mitigate the risk of a potential cyber attack in advance.

Assessing Compliance

In the world of business, compliances protect businesses from potential risks and threats. Moreover, by complying with such compliances, organisations also gain a certificate of trust from the compliance regulatory body. Just like other compliances, we also have compliances for data security, which are regulated by authorities like PCI DSS and GDPR.

These compliance regulatory bodies issue your organisation a certificate showing you comply with the latest data security measures. However, this is only when you actually comply with their measures, which can be tricky to do on your own. An IT security audit can help you find out what you need to do to comply with the data security regulatory bodies.

Improving Security Awareness

You may believe it, but sometimes, organisational data comes at stake with a fraction of the efforts made by the cyberattacker. Yes, you heard it right. Sometimes, a hacker may not need to find a vulnerability and then make efforts to gain access to your organisation's data. It can be as simple as using email spoofing and phishing any of your employees.

But the solution to immunity against such phishing attacks is as simple as making your employees aware of them. IT security audits offer a complementary feature of making your employees more aware of such scams. Moreover, you can also point out employees who can be easy targets of such attacks and train them. This is done by conducting a preventive spoofing test to test the employees' awareness of such things.

Enhancing Incident Response

In addition to preventive measures, a plan of action is also important to enforce the security of data and networks in an organisation. It means what steps should be taken in case a cyberattack happens. It is known as a plan of action, but as the techniques of cyber attackers are increasingly sophisticated and untraceable, your plan of action must be up to date. Yes, a plan of action should be updated from time to time, which can efficiently be done with regular IT security audits. These audits check if the plan of action will work in case of an attack. If inefficiency is found, then suggestions are provided to make it effective.

Providing Assurance to Customers and Stakeholders

No matter what type of organisation you are, D2C, B2B, etc., if you handle data, you'll have to ensure your customers that you are keeping their data safe. Today, data helps in personalisation, which is the top trend of this decade. But it also increases your responsibility to prove yourself capable of storing user data.

One of the best ways to do so is to get regular IT audits. These audits show that you are actively involved in keeping users' or clients' data safe. Moreover, the stakeholders also get the assurance that they'll not run into a problem due to a cyberattack that may lead to a monetary loss.

Allocating the IT Budget

One benefit of security audits that you may not have expected is that they help you allocate your capital for the right IT resources. They help you know where you need to make improvements or what new IT-related things you need to onboard. For example, having IT support is important for any organisation, but setting up an in-house team can be hefty.

You can instead outsource IT support, and it's even beneficial for individual professionals who deal with data. For instance, if you're an accountant, then IT support for accountants can be outsourced at a very low cost.

Conclusion

These six benefits of IT audits are more than enough to get your organisation’s IT infrastructure audited. Moreover, acting on any potential threat found through the audit is even more important. Understanding the importance of cyber security and opting for relevant IT security services can help you safeguard your organisation against cyber attacks.