Locked ComputerSecurity audits can be extremely expensive to hire an outside company to perform. They often require a specific skill set and can be very time consuming. But, if you are willing to dig in and spend some time doing the research, you can perform your own IT security audit.

10 Steps to Creating Your Own IT Security Audit is a very well written and extensive look at doing just this. It covers the majority of the bases when it comes to IT security and goes into more detail when required.

The ten steps that are outlined in this piece are:

  1. Defining the Scope of Your Audit: Creating Asset Lists and a Security Perimeter
  2. Creating a “Threats List”
  3. Past Due Diligence & Predicting the Future
  4. Prioritizing Your Assets & Vulnerabilities
  5. Implementing Network Access Controls
  6. Implementing Intrusion Prevention
  7. Implementing Identity & Access Management
  8. Creating Backups
  9. Email Protection & Filtering
  10. Preventing Physical Intrusions

This is definitely a heavy read and you will probably have to go through it several times just so that you are clear on what they are talking about and what you need to do but it will be worth it. After all, nobody wants to end up like T.J. Maxx!

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