To find a weakness within a company’s computer system or in its recordkeeping practices, sometimes internal audits have to be done. An internal audit is conducted by auditors hired by the business for the purpose of helping them find fraud, flaws and help to improve a company’s operations. An internal audit often involves a wide variety of topics including risk management, governance processes and many other subjects.

Fighting Cyber Crime

One of the newer areas of internal auditing is learning how to spot weaknesses in technology to protect company and client information stored in their computer systems. Cybercrime has become a concern for businesses of every size as billions of dollars are stolen each year through phishing schemes and hack attacks on banks and large retail businesses.

To help fight cybercrime, internal auditors can play a role by using data mapping to find out how long data is kept in the system, who uses the data, why it is used and where it is stored. They can also test the protection of the data to find out how vulnerable it is and give that information to the IT department so they can come up with better ways to protect the data.

Data Separation

When an internal audit of the data is done, data can be divided into three categories. The first category is for data that will have little to no impact on the business or its clients if it is accessed by hackers. The second category of data could cause risk to the company’s reputation if the data was accessed by hackers. This could include private emails, such as what happened to the Sony Corporation when executive emails were stolen and released.

The third category of data could cause real harm to the company if the data were taken. This would include the company’s financial data, the financial data of clients, strategic business plans, customer lists and more. This data would need to be completely separated from the data in the other two categories so it could receive the most protection. An internal audit could help spot these vulnerabilities and assess the risk if the data were accessed by hackers.

Recommending New Practices

As the result of the internal audit, business practices may need to change, or new practices developed to help better protect vulnerable data. This will help protect company assets and keep them from potentially losing millions of dollars of their own or their customers’ money. For auditors who need to brush up on their understanding of how to integrate the auditing process with technology, they can attend internal auditing level 3 courses.

Along with information about how internal auditing can help fight cybercrime, these courses also help auditors learn how to present their findings to senior level executives, how to work and report to stakeholders and how to manage conflict. Learning this information can help internal auditors reduce the risk to their companies so their systems are less vulnerable to attack and can help assure their clients of their reliability.