How to Conduct a Reliable Cybersecurity Audit

New technologies make it possible to continuously obtain objective data in real-time that extend and complement those obtained with the traditional methods used in cybersecurity auditing and make it more reliable.

A cybersecurity audit evaluates and analyzes an organization’s systems, networks, and security practices. Its objective is to identify vulnerabilities, risks, and deficiencies in the corporate cybersecurity strategy and assess compliance with standards and regulations. Cybersecurity audits protect digital assets, sensitive data, and business continuity.

Traditional Ways to Conduct a Cybersecurity Audit

Until the emergence of the latest technologies, Offensive Security and Due Diligence were mainly used to carry out a cybersecurity audit.

Offensive Security and Pentesting

Offensive Security involves the application of ethical hacking techniques and penetration testing to identify and remediate vulnerabilities in systems, networks, and applications
Penetration testing, commonly known as “pentesting”, is at the heart of Offensive Security. It is a controlled and authorized process that simulates a cyberattack against a system, network, application, or infrastructure. It aims to identify and fix vulnerabilities before they can be exploited.

Pentesting is carried out using various techniques, tools, and methodologies to assess the strength of a system’s defenses from the perspective of a potential attacker. Computer security professionals execute these simulated attacks ethically and legally, ensuring that they do not cause damage or disruption to the evaluated systems.
The pentesting process generally follows those stages:

Reconnaissance: This consists of collecting information about the target of the pentesting, including IP addresses, domain names, technologies used, and possible entry points.
Enumeration: A deeper scan is performed to identify active services, open ports, and potential vulnerabilities.
Exploitation: At this stage, an attempt is made to exploit the identified vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access to the assessed system or network.
Post-exploitation: Once access has been achieved, further analysis is performed to determine the extent of the intrusion and possible subsequent actions that an actual attacker could take.
Report: Finally, the findings of pentesting are documented in a detailed report that includes the vulnerabilities identified, their potential impact, and recommendations to mitigate the risks.

Due Diligence

Due diligence entails thoroughly evaluating an organization’s security systems, infrastructure, and practices before conducting a business transaction, such as a merger, acquisition, investment, or strategic alliance. This process seeks to identify and understand the risks associated with the target company. It also seeks to assess their ability to protect digital assets and sensitive data against cyber threats.

During a cybersecurity due diligence, various aspects related to the company’s security posture are examined, including:

Technological infrastructure: Information systems, networks, servers, network devices, and any other component of the corporate technical infrastructure are evaluated. It seeks to identify vulnerabilities, insecure configurations, and possible cyberattack entry points.
Security Policies and Procedures: The company’s security policies, procedures, and practices are reviewed, including access policies, password management, data encryption, event monitoring, and incident response. It seeks to identify possible deficiencies in implementing and enforcing security policies.
Risk management: The company’s ability to identify, assess, and mitigate risks is set. Risk management, vulnerability assessment, impact analysis, and business continuity plans are reviewed during security incidents.
Regulatory compliance: The company’s compliance with applicable cybersecurity regulations and standards, such as GDPR, PCI, and ISO 27001, among others, is verified. It seeks to identify possible regulatory breaches that may result in legal sanctions or loss of trust by customers and business partners.
Security Incident History: Records of previous security incidents, including cyberattacks, data breaches, and other security breaches, are reviewed. It seeks to understand the frequency and severity of past incidents and the company’s response and recovery effectiveness.

Once the cybersecurity Due Diligence is completed, a detailed report summarizes the findings, recommendations, and possible corrective actions needed. This report provides insight into the target company’s cybersecurity strategy, which is used to make informed decisions regarding the business transaction.

Limitations of Traditional Forms of Assessment in Cybersecurity Auditing

Both pentesting and due diligence are valuable tools for assessing a company’s and third-party cybersecurity, but they have inherent limitations. These limitations can affect the effectiveness of these practices in a cybersecurity audit.

Punctual and limited focus: They tend to focus on a specific time and area of the company or asset. This can lead to an incomplete view of the actual state of cybersecurity, as risks can change over time, and vulnerabilities may go undetected during the assessment process.
Reliance on the information provided: In the case of Due Diligence, it relies heavily on the information provided by the company or third parties. This can limit the accuracy of the assessment if the information is incomplete, inaccurate, or deliberately manipulated to hide cybersecurity issues.
Technical and resource limitations: Pentesting requires specialized technical resources and can be costly and time-consuming. As a result, organizations may choose to perform pentesting on a limited basis or not perform it as often as necessary.
Lack of business context: They may lack a full scope of business context and risks specific to each organization. This can lead to generic results that must address the organization’s unique challenges in its operational and business environment.
Lack of in-depth approach to threats outside the internal perimeter: These primarily focus on vulnerabilities in organizations’ internal perimeter and may fail to identify external surface attack risks.
Lack of visibility into third parties: In the case of Due Diligence, it depends on the information provided by the third parties themselves. In the case of pentesting, the authorization of a third party is necessary to carry it out.

New Tools for Cybersecurity Audits

These limitations can now be overcome thanks to new technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or automation, which improve cybersecurity strategies and audits with them.

Thanks to them, innovative XTI Cyber Intelligence tools have emerged that allow organizations to extend the analyzed attack surface beyond the internal perimeter. In this way, objective and real-time data is obtained on the state of its cybersecurity and that of its third parties.

These new tools provide expanded SRS capabilities and collect data across the Web, Deep Web, and Dark Web through non-intrusive means. They then analyze and evaluate their or the third party’s security situation using AI and a specific scoring methodology. This information expands, completes, and weighs the information obtained by traditional third-party risk auditing methods.

In addition, XTI Cyber Intelligence tools empower the organization to assess such risks continuously and in real-time. This point is crucial concerning third-party risk, as it allows for continuous auditing for the duration of the collaboration between the organization and the third party.

There are multiple advantages provided by this way of assessing the state of cybersecurity of one’s own and third parties, to complement the traditional ones:

It is an objective assessment method that does not require human intervention.
It is a non-intrusive method, as it does not require authorization from a third party.
It provides an analysis based on Artificial Intelligence analysis of accurate data on its own or a third party’s open vulnerabilities.
Monitoring and analysis are performed continuously and in real-time.
The existence of hidden information is controlled.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning make it possible to incorporate the specific business context in each use case.
It provides the ability to assess the cybersecurity status of even the nth parts.

With the expansion and complementation of the traditional ways of carrying out cybersecurity audits, thanks to the addition of the new XTI Cyber Intelligence solutions, it is possible to increase the reliability of these audits.