How does your business measure up in terms of IT security? If you don’t have the time or resources to conduct an audit yourself, check out these suggestions from one of our technical experts on how to make your business more secure, while also keeping up with best practices. Read more to learn about three things your business can do now to improve their IT audit posture.

1) Best Practices for Access Review

How can your business improve their access review process? Access reviews are an essential part of every organization’s information security posture. Here are three best practices for conducting more efficient access reviews: start small, run frequent audits, and make sure you have a plan.

Every access request should be reviewed on a regular basis—but that doesn’t mean each new employee has to undergo a full review right away. Instead, start by auditing managers first, then graduate down to teams as needed. Also, running several different types of audits throughout the year is important for staying on top of changes across your entire network. Finally, develop standards so you know what you’re looking for during each audit—for example, which controls are missing or outdated.

2) Best Practices for Patch and Updates Status Reports

Just about every week, there’s a news story about some major security breach: Social Security numbers leaked; credit card numbers stolen; data belonging to millions of consumers hacked and sold on black markets. These stories aren’t hard to find; we hear them on our radios, we read them in our newspapers and online. What isn’t as common is a business owner who realizes he hasn’t done an audit of his company’s patch and update status report for more than six months.

So how do you protect your company? You start with a formal checklist that ensures your networks are protected and up-to-date with patches and updates released by vendors. These lists can be created manually or implemented as software tools.

Here are three best practices for conducting more efficient patch and updates status reviews: be consistent, use a software inventory tool, and tailor reports based on OS. Making these small changes to your current system can make a big difference in keeping track of critical patches across your entire network. In fact, using OS-specific terminology when you report vulnerabilities is an easy way to make sure everyone is on board with current threats.

3) Best Practices for Change Management

Change management is an important aspect of any business, whether it’s a small, local retail shop or a Fortune 500 company. The goal of change management is to handle changes in a positive and efficient manner for all employees. To do so, employees must follow specific policies and procedures for introducing new software or updating existing software. This ensures that all necessary steps are taken before an update is made, including backing up data and verifying compatibility with other programs on your computer.

With best practices for change management in place, businesses can ensure that their information technology (IT) systems are stable and secure at all times. There are many different methods for implementing change management within your business; one method may work better than another depending on your resources and needs.

The first step in implementing best practices for change management is developing a change request form. This form should detail what software will be updated and why it is being updated, along with any other important information about why changes are needed. It’s also important to track any changes made within your network or computer system so that security risks can be mitigated properly if necessary. Keeping detailed notes on your IT systems ensures that all programs have been thoroughly tested and can reduce security risks while new updates are being introduced into your system.

Engaging in a Comprehensive IT Audit

Although comprehensive audits cover much more, the previous steps can help you quickly implement critical controls for some of the most important aspects of any IT audit. When performed by a qualified professional, an audit can be done quickly and easily without disrupting your business operations.

It’s important that you don’t wait until disaster strikes to do an audit—you should start now.  Axeleos has the expertise necessary to conduct a comprehensive IT audit of your business using industry standard frameworks.  Contact us today to schedule an initial consultation and learn how we can help your business audit your IT environment.