Your business relies on many digital systems and networks to function. If you listed each one, you’d quickly be in the double digits, especially in the healthcare industry. Protecting those systems from threats and disruption is just as crucial as the systems themselves, potentially more so. 

Security audits help your business measure against a security framework applied to the systems you use and the data you need to protect. They walk you through the due diligence necessary to secure supporting business infrastructure.

One of the challenges we face today is that modern threats are increasingly sophisticated and deployed at scale, especially with AI-powered campaigns. It only makes sense that the security that protects those systems and data must scale to match.

Too often, businesses rely on outdated approaches without updated auditing tactics, exposing real vulnerabilities. Including penetration testing in your auditing processes can identify weaknesses and reveal where you need to increase security the most. 

How Important Are Business Security Audits?

A business security audit is a formal process that evaluates how effective your security policies, organizational processes, and technical safeguards are. An audit will include checks on the frequency of hardware updates, software configurations, the quality of network security, access controls, and the level of security awareness your employees have. 

A Note About Data Security, Compliance, and Certifications

Maintaining data security and compliance standards is a critical practice in highly regulated industries. This is required to meet industry standards, maintain reputational trust and credibility, and satisfy stakeholders at multiple levels.

A compliance audit will provide a structured process for reviewing applicable laws and regulations for businesses of your type, identifying potential areas where compliance isn’t met. With a systematic process for reviewing security, infrastructure, data encryption, backups, redundancies, and disaster recovery plans, businesses can operate from a proactive position.

Industry-focused compliance frameworks like HITRUST offer a robust, comprehensive, and well-established model that organizations can adopt to protect sensitive data. The third-party validation of a certification like HITRUST can help demonstrate a company’s commitment to secure practices. 

The New World of AI Compliance

The rapid adoption of AI-powered everything has changed the way businesses approach security. As more systems rely on automated processes, there are new considerations regarding AI compliance standards. 

AI tools access significant volumes of data. The need to take adequate precautions to protect data privacy and maintain secure information is critical. A security audit will evaluate AI systems and how they handle data. It is essentially treated as a vendor, with every step of the process evaluated for security.

Do the AI tools your organization uses meet all the requirements of industry regulations? GDPR and CCPA are some of the most common, but there are now several AI-specific regulations like the EU AI Act, and industry-specific standards like the US Treasury’s Financial Services AI Risk Management Framework, or the HITRUST AI Security Certification. Ensuring your AI usage and systems fall within regulatory guidelines can help protect sensitive data and prevent potential threats before they occur. 

A Quick Overview of Penetration Testing

Penetration testing is usually conducted by an outside security team. They’ll launch no-harm simulated attacks to pressure-test your business’s digital security. This will reveal any vulnerabilities in a safe environment without compromising your data or systems. 

The core objective of penetration testing is to find hidden and unknown gaps in your security practices. Obvious vulnerabilities are usually protected already, whereas the ones that are hard to find are more likely to be exploited by a resourceful hacker.  

Penetration tests are planned in several structured phases, including planning, reconnaissance, network scanning, attack simulation, and a thorough analysis. These tests provide businesses with clear guidance on how to prevent exploitation, augmenting a standard security audit. 

Where Security Audits and Penetration Testing Align

Penetration tests and security audits support data security, business continuity, and resilience. In concert, they can create a unified effort toward creating stronger security defenses.  

• Security Audits: Provide a broad overview of your systems’ overall integrity and to evaluate whether you have the right policies and processes in place. Also beneficial for presenting to stakeholders and partners to prove due diligence or for periodic reviews. These are often aligned to specific compliance or regulatory standards.
• Penetration Testing: Validates specific security controls and identifies vulnerabilities to address. Many organizations conduct penetration testing on an annual or continuous basis, before launching new applications or code changes, or immediately after a disruption to identify new vulnerabilities. 

How To Uncover New Vulnerabilities With Penetration Testing

Security audits are built to help evaluate general cybersecurity standards. Penetration testing puts your systems to the test with the intention of breaking them and finding weaknesses. 

An audit measures what’s already in place against industry standards and benchmarks. Penetration testing simulates a real-world attack, using the latest emerging tactics to exploit your systems the way threat actors do. 

It’s an invasive form of testing that reveals what a security audit doesn’t go deep enough to catch. A penetration test may involve: 

• Running multiple attack scenarios
• Running multiple attack scenarios simultaneously
• AI-powered deep-dives
• Combining different tactics to effectively breach
• Internal testing
• External testing
• Application testing
• Social engineering
• Exploitation and post-exploitation tactics
• Remediation
• Review and analysis

Different Types of Penetration Testing

Modern cybersecurity is agile and dynamic. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to penetration testing that works for every business or vertical. Most penetration testing services diversify their tactics when stress-testing different types of businesses. The following are some of the most common strategies.

Red Team Penetration Testing

Red team testing puts a team of ethical hackers to the task, as they attempt to breach a company’s defenses. They will have no prior knowledge of the organization’s security measures, network structure, or underlying infrastructure. This is where it begins, testing the outer security perimeters and gaining initial network access.

Purple Team Penetration Testing

Purple team penetration testing is a collaborative approach with internal teams that informs how they approach simulated attacks using more strategic methods. Hackers could be given resources such as network maps, user credentials, or configuration files that help them design more sophisticated attacks.

Physical Penetration Testing

Physical Penetration Testing involves in-person, on-site infiltrations to gain credentials or otherwise break into tech systems. These hackers would have access to increasingly significant information across access levels. This enables them to get direct access to their target systems and move quickly across networks.

Integrate Penetration Testing Into Your Security Strategy

As you scale, so must your security. Make regular security auditing and penetration testing a baked-in part of your growth plans. Doing this will help you stay compliant and be more resilient.