CyberSecurity Audit vs. CyberSecurity Assessment

CyberSecurity Audit is dissimilar to CyberSecurity Assessment. Having clarified this dissimilarity in very simple terms, because there is often confusion between these two terms, we will focus on both of them.


CyberSecurity Audit vs Assessment Terms to Know

There are various terms used in the world of cybersecurity particularly when it comes down to audit and assessment. These are terms you should know either as an entrepreneur/business person or a cybersecurity practitioner (goes without saying for a cybersecurity practitioner).

Audit

When we get to know a bit more about what controls mean, we will fully understand what an audit means. However, before we get to that, an audit is a list of cybersecurity controls to be checked off to ensure that a business is really in line with cybersecurity policies, guidelines and recommendations. Since this involves policies and guidelines, this is usually carried out by an external party; oftentimes, there are cybersecurity auditors who are staff of the company in question but their interdependence with the company makes them unreliable which is why an external auditor carries out the cybersecurity audit.

Assessment

A cybersecurity assessment takes the audit further. While an audit is surface-layered, an assessment goes further by looking at the details: how effective is this control? How efficient is that process? Does this control kick in or work in real-time? Questions like these which get to the meat of how the controls work is what an assessment is for. It is carried out by the business itself and has nothing to do with a third-party organization or personnel.

Controls

Controls are, in simple terms, tools used to meet cybersecurity goals. They are contained in a Control Library, a name for a container of all the controls used in a business. 

Testing

Also known as penetration testing and pen tests, this serves more of a process for examining the tools (controls) and processes for cybersecurity to know if they meet expected measures required for cybersecurity in a particular domain.

Key Differences Between an Audit and an Assessment in CyberSecurity

This is how you tell if a CyberSecurity Audit is being carried out:

  1. A cybersecurity audit is usually external i.e. it is carried out by a third-party instead of an internal party in a bid to ensure that the feedback gotten from the audit is true, fair and impartial, and not coated with bias. Oftentimes, an internal audit is involved but this does not overshadow the role of the external cybersecurity auditor. 

  2. The personnel on the ground, carrying out the audit, have certifications in the type of cybersecurity audit being carried out.

  3. It takes on a more formal approach than a cybersecurity assessment.

  4. A cybersecurity audit does not take the health of cybersecurity tools and processes into consideration; it just tells a bit about the cybersecurity status of the company.

  5. It is more expensive than how much it takes to have a cybersecurity assessment.

This is how you tell if a CyberSecurity Assessment is being carried out:

  1. It is used to discover how effective and efficient the available cybersecurity tools and processes are in real-time and not just theoretically.

  2. This is often done in a freestyle mode and does not need to be formal.

  3. This is more rigorous, in-depth and detailed than a cybersecurity audit.

  4. There are different types of cybersecurity assessments.


Types of CyberSecurity Assessment

The different types of cybersecurity assessment are centered around risk, threat, maturity, compliance, and flexibility. Taking them one by one:

CyberSecurity Risk Assessment

This measures the vulnerabilities and impacts the likelihood or possibility of a cyber attack or cybersecurity threat has on a business or software. Then, it provides solutions that could work to counteract these potential threats. A risk assessment sees, estimates, and inspects a threat before it happens.

CyberSecurity Threat Assessment

While a risk assessment focuses on possibility, the threat assessment goes more in-depth by modeling a potential threat environment. It figures out what the threats are and how grave they are.

CyberSecurity Maturity Assessment

This assessment measures how your cybersecurity technology and processes have grown and developed over a period of time. Conducting this assessment requires that it cites the DoD’s Cyber Maturity Model Certification as an assessment model or the DoE’s Cyber Capability Maturity Model. By conducting this assessment, business owners can easily know where, how, and what to focus their growth objectives on instead of spending a lot of their time focusing growth on areas that have achieved full-growth capability.

CyberSecurity Compliance Assessment

Compliance, beyond the world of technology, always points at a regulation or government policies to measure if a certain activity is being carried out as stipulated in the regulation or policy. In the world of technology, cybersecurity precisely, the compliance assessment gauges cybersecurity tools and processes against recommended models such as the ISO 27000 (the International Organization for Standardization) model, the SOX (the Sarbanes-Oxley) model, the PCI model and the NIST 800-53 (the National Institute of Standards and Technology Special Publication 800-53) model.

CyberSecurity Resiliency Assessment

This assessment measures the flexibility of cybersecurity tools and processes in a company (in cybersecurity lingo, we mean that it tests how flexible the cybersecurity controls are). And how a business can figure out, block out or bounce back from a cyber attack.

CyberSecurity Current-State Assessment

This looks at where cybersecurity is in an environment, a domain or a business and scales it against where it hopes to grow to or be in the future. Its future-state is looked at in comparison to its current state.

Knowing these is significant in knowing when to conduct either a cybersecurity audit or a cybersecurity assessment. Pining to just check off some items on a list? Go for a cybersecurity audit but mind the cost because it is expensive. Need to know the details of your cybersecurity controls from your controls library? Choose any of the six available cybersecurity assessments and get to work.

Of these two types, none stands above the other but they definitely play different roles at different points in time for a business, an environment, or a domain.

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