Understand how cyber diligence helps you in IT Security Audit & Assessment

Posted by Ariento Com on February 13th, 2020

The due cyber diligence process influences the price that an organization ultimately pays in a M&A deal. If the enterprise uncovers danger, their offering price will be lower. Unfortunately, a cyber risk assessment is often not included as part of the process. In fact, 78% of organizations state that cyber security managed services is not included in the risks they deal with or analyze in-depth during due diligence.

Instead, many deal makers depend on statements regarding the state of security from executives or others in the organization or firm, which may be less than reliable. In a recent survey, 60% of high-ranking executives stated they could "truthfully assure the board beyond reasonable doubt" that their organizations or firm are secure. However, less than one-third claimed that they had full exposure to their network infrastructure. As such, they may not be fully conscious of all the gaps that exist and where they are located.

Without a cyber risk assessment, the acquiring organization puts itself at risk of taking on unknown security vulnerabilities, which can have a major impact on the organization's overall security level. In order for the acquiring enterprise to put good governance, risk management, and compliance practices into place, they must have a solid understanding of the other company's security posture.

A thorough cyber risk assessment should encompass all parts of an organization's network and security architecture. Best practices call for obtain enterprises to provide the acquired party with a questionnaire in which it can give a overview of all the administrative, technical, and physical security controls it has in place. This party should be asked to identify its most critical data assets, where its sensitive data is stored, and how this information is protected in motion, at rest, and in transit.

During the cyber diligence process, it's important to ensure that the organization being acquired has not only invested in threat prevention and identification measures which will helps you in IT Security and Assessment-which often receive the lion's share of budgets-but also in measures to recover from security incidents and attacks. After all, the latter will impact how resilient the organization is to withstand and recover from security events, and these counts can be used to quantify overall risk. The organization should have a documented crisis management or incident response plan that is updated, tried, tested, and approved by senior management.

As part of a cyber risk assessment, acquiring organizations should also determine what percentage of the other party's budget is dedicated to security investments and maintenance. One further region to investigate is which departments have a remarkable involvement with security matters. This may include business unit managers, the legal department, audit and compliance teams, finance, human resources, IT, and risk managers. 

Ariento take the IT, cyber & compliance burdens off your plate, giving you one less thing to worry about, so you can focus on what you are good at. To know more about IT security audit and IT security assessment visit our site