Many security and compliance professionals hear the term “continuous monitoring” as part of their information security process, and have a good grasp of the term’s meaning – but “continuous auditing” may feel redundant or confusing. That’s unfortunate. Understanding how continuous auditing fits into a security-first approach to cybersecurity helps both to protect the integrity of your data and to prove the strength of your controls work.

Regular, comprehensive audits keep organizations on track. Audits come in all shapes and sizes, too: internal and external audits; audits of finance, audits of data, audits of operations. As a business owner, whether for a large enterprise or a small business, you want to assure that your stakeholders can trust your business operations and that your finances are in order. Internal audits are a great way to reinforce that trust and credibility.

After completing an ISO 27001 audit, there may be some critical responses you must undertake based on the recommendation in your audit report. This step-by-step guide will ensure you don’t miss any of the outstanding follow-up tasks that need to be addressed after the audit process is over. Learn how UpGuard simplifies Vendor Risk Management >

So, now what? On the other side of this considerable investment of time and money, it helps to have a structured, checklist-style post guiding you through the post-SOC 2 audit process. This article addresses all of the due diligence requirements after receiving a SOC 2 audit, and clarifies some of the common misunderstandings cybersecurity teams have when it comes to SOC 2 reports.

While we all know the actual point of PCI is vastly more far-reaching, we can’t deny that the juggernaut of PCI DSS 4.0 compliance is getting past the auditors. However, there is a right way to do it that doesn’t just check the box – it creates the underlying business operations that enable you to pass an audit any day, at any time, with just the processes you have in hand. Here’s how.

When was the last time you performed your cybersecurity audit? An audit of complete cybersecurity management, not a simple scan. If it has been longer than you remember, then you are probably at risk of being a victim of cyberattacks. As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, the risk of cyberattacks escalates. To safeguard against these threats, it is essential to have a robust cybersecurity management system in place.

Companies nowadays deal with vast amounts of data that are sensitive and to be protected at all times. While measures are adopted by them to ensure the safety of their applications and data, it is prudent to regularly test the efficacy of the adopted security measures.

Today’s corporate IT environments are complex and diverse. The security system to protect those environments can easily have hundreds of individual parts, and all of those parts need to be looked at individually and as a whole. To assure that all those parts are working as intended, you should perform a cybersecurity audit. Audits aren’t just good sense, either; many data privacy and security regulations require audits. That said, the steps for a cybersecurity audit can be long.

Achieving SOC 2 compliance often necessitates the use of specialized tools and software to address specific application and data security measures, but which ones are the best to get the job done? We asked our customers which tools they used and compiled their answers below. Now, let’s break down the tools that have helped our customers achieve compliance excellence, so you can, too. Tools or services marked with * denotes a partner or integration.

POV: an important prospect requires all of their partners to get a SOC 2 audit. You’ve just met with your auditing firm and you’ve been tasked with evidence collection, which sounds like tracking down a lot of people and documents. No one can tell you when the RFP knowledge base was last updated. The sales team is asking how long it will take, and can it go faster? You sit back and wonder the same thing: is it possible, and if so, how?