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How can an organization maintain efficient and effective security practices while remaining aware of potential security threats? IT security audits provide security professionals, internal auditors, risk professionals and internal audit staff a means of assessing an organization's overall security posture.
Regular security audits will give an idea of the cybersecurity risks your organization is exposed to and how prepared it may be against threats such as social engineering attacks or vulnerabilities.
What Is A Security Audit?
An information security audit is an evaluation that assesses the security of an organization's systems. Assessments compare your system against best industry practices, external standards, or federal regulations to determine security levels.
A comprehensive audit will include an evaluation of the following:
Your system consists of physical components and its surroundings.
- Your system administrators have already installed applications and software, along with security patches.
- Network vulnerabilities include public and Private Access as well as Firewall Configurations.
- The human dimension refers to how employees collect, store and share susceptible information.
- An organization's overall security strategy, including policies and organization charts.
How Does A Security Audit Work?
Security audits ascertain whether your organization's information systems meet internal or external criteria governing data, infrastructure and network security.
Internal standards include your company's IT procedures, policies, and security controls.
External measures include federal regulations like HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley Act and standards from organizations like ISO or NIST.
Attaining optimal results often requires combining internal and external criteria.
A security audit compares your organization's IT practices with relevant industry standards and pinpoints areas for improvement and expansion.
Auditors will examine security controls to ascertain if they are adequate, verify compliance with policies, identify breaches, and make recommendations based on their findings.
An audit report will include observations, recommendations for change and additional details regarding your security program.
An auditor may identify potential security vulnerabilities or breaches that were previously unknown. This data will inform your cybersecurity risk-management approach, and its priorities are aligned with the organization's goals and strategies.
What Is The Primary Purpose Of A Security Audit? Why Is It Important?
An organization's security audit thoroughly examines its primary information security vulnerabilities. It should help pinpoint those areas where your organization needs to meet the criteria set for itself.
Security audits are precious tools when developing risk assessment strategies and mitigation plans in organizations dealing with sensitive or confidential data.
Successful security audits provide your team with an overview of the current state of security in your organization and enough detail for remediation and improvement activities to begin immediately.
Security audits may also serve as formal compliance audits conducted by third-party audit teams to attain SOC 2 or ISO 27001 attestations.
Security audits provide your organization with a fresh look at IT security strategies and practices, whether conducted externally or internally by an independent auditor.
Analyzing your organization's security policies will provide valuable insight into ways to strengthen controls and streamline processes for greater efficiency and fewer cybercrime threats from within and without. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to cybersecurity will enable an organization to better respond to security threats that emerge in real-time.
Audits of information security programs are indispensable tools for keeping them practical and up-to-date.
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Security Audits Can Be Performed Using Various Standards
You should follow specific steps when performing one: it involves an in-depth evaluation of all elements in your IT infrastructure, such as operating systems, servers and digital communication tools, as well as applications, processes for data collection and storage, third-party service providers etc.
When conducting such an assessment:
Select Security Audit Criteria
Utilize these criteria to compile a list of security controls you can assess and test while recording any company policies regarding cybersecurity that will be reviewed during an audit.
If your organization is embarking on a dual audit for compliance and security, such as SOC 2 or ISO 27001, ensure that all processes in place meet the criteria or standards set out for your audit.
Assess Staff Training
Human error increases with multiple users having access to sensitive data. Make sure a record exists showing which staff are authorized to access such information and who has received training on cybersecurity risk management, IT security or compliance - plan to provide necessary training sessions as soon as possible.
Most cybersecurity frameworks mandate at least some security training for all or most employees.
Review Logs And Responses To Events
Consider reviewing network logs and events. Records can help ensure that only authorized employees access sensitive data and follow security procedures.
At the same time, audit logs provide valuable incident response capabilities, root cause analysis capabilities, and analysis for incident response plans or root cause analysis purposes - these should all be stored according to security policies.
Monitoring logs alone won't suffice when there are incidents or abnormal events; response teams must also be ready to act if monitoring software or personnel flag an issue.
Standard operating procedures and templates for everyday events can help make IT security and compliance audits simpler.
Determine Vulnerabilities
Your security audit can highlight some of the most apparent vulnerabilities before conducting a vulnerability assessment or penetration test.
For instance, if patches are old or employee passwords haven't been updated for over one year, it's essential that regular audits be conducted; regular security audits ensure maximum efficiency and effectiveness for both penetration testing and vulnerability assessments. Audits should identify any vulnerabilities in security policies and controls within an organization to enable corrective action to be taken accordingly.
Safeguard Yourself Against Harm
Once you've reviewed and addressed all vulnerabilities within your organization, and verified that all staff have received training on appropriate protocols, ensure internal controls are in place to prevent fraud.
Limiting users' access to sensitive data would be one example; similarly, providing wireless networks and encryption tools are up-to-date, and antivirus software is installed and updated across the board.
Owners who perform annual security audits should review and approve security policies regularly while also ensuring there is sufficient documentation proving that their controls are working as intended.
Why Do Companies Need Security Audits?
Regular security audits are necessary for companies to protect client data, comply with federal laws, and avoid fines and liabilities.
Companies must remain up-to-date with evolving federal legislation such as HIPAA, SOX and others to avoid penalties; audits of security systems must take place regularly as part of compliance audits to meet new security requirements; renewal of certifications such as ISO 27001 or attestations such as SOC 2 may also be mandatory requirements.
How Do You Perform A Security Audit?
How you conduct a security assessment depends on the criteria for evaluating your organization's information systems.
Compliance requirements that your business must fulfill will help dictate a comprehensive security audit of all aspects.
An audit involves speaking to key stakeholders to get an in-depth understanding of sensitive data contained within IT systems, the security controls that exist to protect it, and the way the IT infrastructure functions.
Interviews may also cover other aspects of the environment, such as perimeter firewalls, previous data breaches and recent incidents (known as walkthroughs). Some auditors may wish to watch controls being implemented in real-time.
At a security review, the audit team will request to examine various documents such as security policies, diagrams and tickets to see whether security policies are being followed correctly.
Cybersecurity audit practitioners may conduct penetration tests or vulnerability scans as part of an audit or use automated technology for specific audit procedures.
Various computer-assisted auditor techniques (CAATs) on the market automate your audit process, running through an audit process to look for vulnerabilities and automatically creating audit reports.
When reviewing these reports, always have an IT manager or professional auditor check them first.
Depending on an organization's objective, security audits can be carried out internally by its auditing function or externally by an independent third-party firm.
Third-party audits may also be necessary when applying for certifications and attestations. Both internal and external cybersecurity audits have advantages: external auditors bring unique perspectives. In contrast, internal auditors gain an in-depth knowledge of an organization's controls and systems, allowing them to optimize processes while developing relationships with key stakeholders.
Cybersecurity Monitoring: Importance Tools Process
Staying up-to-date with technology and society can be challenging, yet everyone strives to keep pace. Small-scale businesses and shop vendors now accept online payments; unfortunately, several organizations experienced data breaches during the lockdown, which resulted in heavy financial losses.
Criminal hackers, known as black hat hackers, breach computer networks with malicious malware to damage files and steal vital data of organizations.
Cyber Security Monitoring detects threats before they escalate into serious security concerns. At the same time, online courses in Ethical Hacking provide insight into this practice.
Read more: Cybersecurity Hardware Security And Software Security
What is Cyber Security Monitoring (CSM)?
Cyber Security Monitoring is an automated process which continuously observes an organization's network behavior, keeping an eye on traffic to see if there are attempts at damaging data (data breaches), cyber threats or making other kinds of cyber intrusion attempts.
When this happens, an alert will be sent to Security Incident and Event Management (SIEM). We will delve deeper into SIEM shortly.
Why Is Security Monitoring Important?
As technology evolves, traditional cybersecurity tools may no longer provide sufficient protection from data breaches and attacks; advanced tactics should now be employed instead.
Before now, any organization affected by a data breach experienced significant financial losses.
Even when a website or application of an organization becomes inaccessible due to server-side issues, its reputation will still be at stake and must be preserved at all costs.
Security monitoring primarily seeks to maintain these attributes:
- Reputation
- Privacy of User Data
- Availability
- Misuse of Organization Service
An attacker can employ various means to impede user access to websites or applications, including DDoS attacks, malicious code injection, commands, etc.
- DDoS
DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service. A DDos attack involves sending an attacker an endless stream of requests or packets until an error occurs (500-599 server-side errors are typically encountered).
As a result, resources in your organization become inaccessible.
- Injecting Malicious code or Command
An attacker could damage users' privacy if they inject malicious code or commands into various input fields or URL endpoints, so it is advised that users identify these types of orders or regulations and block them immediately.
For security monitoring to effectively counter such malicious attacks, requests that seek to access these databases must be blocked, rejected or prevented from access.
What Is Cyber Security Threat Management?
Cyber Security Threat Monitoring allows us to keep an eye on the network in real time and detect any malicious or suspicious activities on it, enabling our cyber security team or IT department to take preventative measures before an attack occurs.
Security protocols allow organizations to store any unknown packet that enters their network into a database for professional analysis and, if harmful, triage and take appropriate actions accordingly.
An alert will also go directly to the IT department. Take two types of monitoring into consideration in order to gain more insight:
Endpoint Monitoring: The term "endpoint" can refer to devices like phones, laptops, desktops, cell phones and Internet of Things devices (IOT).
Endpoint monitoring refers to monitoring devices connected to specific networks and observing their activities to detect threats and take preventative steps when they observe behavior that appears malicious, abnormal, or suspicious.
IT teams use endpoint monitoring techniques to spot threats early and take proactive measures against potential problems when they occur.
Network Monitoring: A network is composed of interconnected devices which share and exchange data.
Network Monitoring refers to the process of keeping an eye on and analyzing a network, with results coming back based on the results of monitoring.
Suppose components do not function as intended during monitoring sessions, such as overloading, crashes or slow speeds. In that case, these conditions make the system vulnerable to cyber threats.
Cybersecurity Monitoring Is Essential
As stated before, pandemics cause an exponentially increasing rate of cyber attacks. To counteract this threat, organizations must closely monitor both their network and any packets that might come through to prevent any accidents.
Reduce Data Breaches Whilst Monitoring Continuously
Regular security monitoring allows organizations to detect potential threats before they arise and protect sensitive information about their users and employees from being compromised, thus making continuous security monitoring very efficient.
Improve Your Response Time To Attacks
Most organizations have implemented security measures in place to guard themselves against cyber attacks and threats, but if an attack should take place, they must be ready to react quickly and correct it as soon as possible to ensure their assets remain accessible at all times to users.
Addressing Security Vulnerabilities
Every system contains vulnerabilities. To address them means finding and fixing those flaws before someone attempts to exploit them; this includes updating all protocols and firewalls before an outside threat uses them.
Various organizations offer "Bug Hunting programs."
Under its bug-hunting program, organizations invite ethical hackers to hack the system ethically and report any vulnerabilities, so they can confirm and fix them as quickly as possible.
Bounties, swags or halls of fame may be offered depending on the severity of the vulnerability reported.
Standards and Regulations
Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability are at the core of cybersecurity. Organizations must abide by this rule to secure data.
Even failing to meet a single requirement increases network vulnerability - something which can damage their reputation and success as a business. By closely monitoring cybersecurity, you can address such problems.
Reduce Downtime
To minimize downtime, organizations should ensure their network is fully functional to facilitate all operations efficiently and respond rapidly if any threats emerge.
Regular cybersecurity monitoring may lower the risk of their web or server going offline.
The Nature of Threats Has Shifted
Cybercriminals have become more sophisticated over time, constantly devising ways to breach any organization's security measures on its network.
Cybercriminals use new techniques, attacks and tactics almost daily in their malicious activities; to defend against this problem, it is wise to keep an eye on what's going on 24/7/365.
Increase Employee Productivity
Every organization employs workers, and every company seeks to make them more productive. IT infrastructure can play an invaluable role by providing an environment where staff members can focus on developing their core skills while working more quickly on related tasks.
Attaining this goal can be done by hiring a security specialist who will handle all technical responsibilities on behalf of all staff members, increasing the productivity and productivity of the entire office.
The Challenges of Implementing Continuous Security Monitoring
Cybersecurity can only be truly effective with Continuous Designing the security monitoring.
A Continuous Security Monitor Plan monitors network activity to enable organizations to implement adequate security controls.
Critical Asset Identification
In many organizations, user data is invaluable and only expected to grow. Therefore, organizations must put into place a Continuous Security Monitoring plan (CSM) which will identify critical assets within their organization - each department should be classified according to its level of importance, such as low, medium, and high - while considering how often assets will be scanned, analyzed and retained for security.
Keep an Eye on Endpoint Activity
It is vitally important to monitor endpoint activity, but this can be challenging. Endpoints don't only consist of PCs - stakeholders may wish to add other devices like smartphones, printers or wearables into the monitoring plan for continuous security monitoring if possible - otherwise, any miscalculation could prove disastrous for an organization.
A hybrid real-time and passive monitoring system with an active scanner that's always on will allow for efficient tracking of organizations.
Selecting the Appropriate Tools
It can take time to determine the optimal toolset for continuous security monitoring. Yet, necessary tools must also respond rapidly when incidents arise or be handled automatically by IT.
Therefore it is vital to choose tools which can automatically analyze logs and packets while recording logs for further examination and real-time monitoring capabilities.
Attacks Detection Through Proper Security Monitoring
Designing the security monitoring plan so that automation tools are capable of identifying any attacks and taking appropriate actions will constitute effective attack detection by security monitoring - one of the critical elements of security monitoring.
Even with an expert present, security monitoring plans should be designed to filter out abnormal traffic for display by an expert quickly.
Security monitoring plans must also alert IT teams if any unusual activity is detected; here are some primary areas where attackers can easily be seen:
IP address
If the server receives continuous requests from a single IP address within an extremely short period, this could indicate a problem.
We could then block all IP address requests (as configured by the organization) for an agreed-upon period to allow the server time to recover while keeping resources available for other users.
Similar Pattern Packets
A series of similar packets from multiple IPs will quickly arrive, and an organization must decide whether or not to reject or block these.
Accessing Restricted Files or URLs
Users attempting to access restricted files not intended for end-user consumption but located on a server will be denied or blocked from doing so.
Identify Specific Keywords and Character
Let's examine a simple example of XSS. These attacks typically use scripting languages with functions that use symbols like > and "()" within input fields like names or numbers to detect attacks.
When such characters appear in user input fields like names or phone numbers, we know they could be an attempt at invasion.
Security Monitoring Best Practices
Locate Assets & Events That Need To Be Logged And Monitored
Logging and monitoring strange events are critically important, providing two benefits. An investigation team can quickly pinpoint an attacker if data has been compromised.
In contrast, security teams can examine recorded events to detect vulnerabilities.
Establish an Active Monitoring, Alerting and Incident Response Plan
To address this problem, there are three steps
- Active Monitoring: Active monitoring involves continuously observing traffic using a SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) tool such as Splunk Enterprise Security or IBM Security QRadar to automate this monitoring process. Many organizations utilize such SIEM products as they streamline monitoring efforts.
- Incident Response: An organization uses their SIEM tool to preconfigure acceptance/rejection/blocklist rules based on packet structures/patterns for individual packet requests that arrive at its SIEM tool, with incident response specialists then manually responding. Incident response involves devising plans to address unexpected events quickly while making immediate decisions when they arise.
- Alerting: Alerting sends notifications directly to an administrator or user with whom an ID has been set up. Alerting notifies either one when specific actions occur - for instance when someone attempts to upload malicious files or brute force an admin panel password.
Determine Your Requirements for Logging and Monitoring Services
Security teams can increase security with logs. Monitoring has the advantage of automation; without needing human input from security professionals, monitoring can block or reject requests automatically.
Update Monitoring Plan, Firewalls and Protocols
Monitoring plans, firewalls and protocols must remain up-to-date at all times. An attacker who gains access to an older service version could use it against an organization and cause irreparable harm.
Updates contain bug fixes which provide more secure systems.
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Conclusion
Cyber security monitoring is the first step towards protecting an organization's system.
Cybersecurity monitoring remains a central element in cybersecurity practice, with effective cybersecurity security monitoring preventing most attacks.
