Audit Program: Selecting IT Infrastructure Controls - Report Example

Introduction

When establishing an audit program, the auditing committee or auditor will select those items or controls, within an organization’s IT infrastructure that will be audited. Referring back to NIST SP 800-53 and NIST SP 800-53A, controls are selected and those items which need to be reviewed are selected.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Enterprises provide services to their customers in the forms of operating systems, applications, hardware, Internet, VoIP and security. These services are provided through internal hardware you would find in a server room such as an application server, data storage, web servers, email servers, call-managers, firewalls, and security appliances that provide network based security and monitoring.

Third Party

Often, there are services that are provided to an enterprise by a third party vendor or other organization such as SaaS, cloud based storage, telephony, security, web hosting, connectivity, routing and switching. Though these services are not inherent to the enterprise, there are still controls that are auditable.

When developing an audit plan, we first have to identify those items that are to be audited. Each audit looks at controls that are derived from internal and external sources. Items or controls that are internal to the enterprise are known as internal controls. These are controls that are implemented and managed locally within the organization and the enterprise.

Often, services are provided by outside vendors or third parties. Compliance is usually managed through the use of service level agreements (SLA). An SLA is a contractual agreement that the vendor or third party will adhere to a predefined set of requirements. These requirements should fall within the organizations compliance requirements. The services an organization receives from an external agency are known as inherited controls.

A key component in developing an audit plan is to identify those controls that are internal and inherited to an organization. As an auditor, you are responsible to ensure those controls that are both internal and inherited are within compliance of accrediting the system. Those items not meeting SLA requirements that may or may not be injecting any level of risk into accreditation should be reported to the client or contracting official within your organization.

Control Name Control Assessment Objective Internal / Inherited

Use of External Information Systems AC-21(1).1

Determine if the information system employs automated mechanisms to enable authorized users to make information-sharing decisions based on access authorizations of sharing partners and access restrictions on information to be shared. Internal

Content of Audit Records AU-3(2).1

Determine if: the organization defines the information system components for which the content of audit records generated is centrally managed; and the organization centrally manages the content of audit records generated by organization-defined information system components. Internal

Information Systems Connections CA-3.1

Determine if the organization identifies connections to external information systems (i.e., information systems outside of the authorization boundary); the organization authorizes connections from the information system to external information systems through the use of Interconnection Security Agreements; the organization documents, for each connection, the interface characteristics, security requirements, and the nature of the information communicated; and the organization monitors the information system connections on an ongoing basis to verify enforcement of security requirements. Inherited

Incident Monitoring IR-5(1)

Determine if the organization employs automated mechanisms to assist in the tracking of security incidents; the organization employs automated mechanisms to assist in the collection of security incident information; and the organization employs automated mechanisms to assist in the analysis of security incident information.

Conclusion

An audit plan consists of various components as you have learned in your reading and lessons. A fundamental document that is the foundation of any audit is to clearly define what it is that’s going to be audited. When that’s know, the auditor can review those items to determine which controls are internal and which are inherited so that the right resources can be assigned to validating those controls.