9 Reasons Why Quarterly Website Security Audits Are A Must

Nowadays you will find a website affiliated to everything, whether the business be big or small. It has become the new brand image to have a business website where you can showcase about your company and the services that you offer. This has allowed small business to scale themselves to a global level by having access to a larger audience base. With this, they can go toe to toe with huge corporations and have a fair and healthy competition.

However even with having such resources at their disposal, small businesses cannot compete with the large scale in-house infrastructure these corporations have. They must rely on third party service providers in order to fulfil these obligations. One of them being security audits. Small businesses cannot afford to have a complacent IT department in their initial days due to various reasons. However, that doesn’t mean that they can lax on their website’s security.

To put simply, security audits is the evaluation of a company’s infrastructure and its IT department and see how well it adheres to a pre-defined set of criteria. They are useful in determining how compliant websites are with respect to norms and guidelines set forth by global committees. It is essential for businesses to carry out quarterly security audits for their website due to various factors. And today we will list the top 10 reasons for doing so. 

1. To Protect Your Business and Infrastructure from Vulnerabilities and Cyber Attacks:

One of the primary reasons for carrying out a security audit is to assess the security protocols set forth by your company and test them for vulnerabilities. While it is entirely possible that the audit may come up empty handed in regard to any malware present on your servers, but it can help identify any potential loopholes or chinks in your security system which might’ve been overlooked when it was first installed. This helps you keep track of the status of your security as well as allows you to patch it up in case any flaws are observed.

2.To Ensure That You’re Compliant with Regards To The Guidelines Set Place:

If you operate an e-commerce website, you must be familiar with many guidelines and checklists that you have to follow in order to ensure your website’s security. These regulations are set in place to make sure that consumer’s data is well protected and their privacy is respected.

In the event of a cyber-attack, if you have followed all the necessary steps you can save this confidential information from getting in the hands of hackers. Therefore it is essential to monitor and ensure that these guidelines are met and there is no lapse in security.

3. To Avoid Footing a Massive Bill Later On:

If your website gets hacked, you maybe looking at a complete loss of revenue for a long period of time. On top of that you have to pay for your website’s recovery and clean up which can take a lot of time and money. This however can be avoided with security audits being conducted at regular intervals as they allow you to stay on top of your game thus saving you money in the long run.

4. Put In Place New Security Policies:

By having a thorough security audit, businesses can come to know about the places that their old security policy lacked in as well as the measures that they can take in order to help rectify those flaws and further strengthen their defense’s. This gives rise to new security policies that are better structured as well as more complacent in regards to security as compared to the old policies and procedures.

5. Response In The Event Of An Actual Attack:

If you never conduct security audits periodically it may very well be possible that you will be ill prepared in the event of an actual attack. This can result in the loss of revenue as well as your reputation. However if you do conduct such security audits, you will remain well trained as to what measures should be employed in such events and you may be able to thwart any attacks that come your way.

6. Keep Your Security Systems Updated:

By having a well structured audit, it is possible to know how well your infrastructure can stand in the event of an actual attack. This allows you to get a better grasp of your system and helps you make decisions if you need to upgrade them or not.

7. Evaluate The Flow of Data:

Data is an integral part of a company’s daily functioning as it helps them map out their further course of action. Therefore it is essential to ensure that such valuable information be well protected during its transfer.

If there are any flaws in the network, hackers can get access to this data which will affect the business negatively. Security audits help ensure that the flow of information takes place in a well protected and secure manner.

8. Ensures Your Infrastructure and Policy Match each Other:

It doesn’t matter how complacent your policies are if you don’t have the right infrastructure to match it. By conducting regular security audits you get a clear idea of the requirements for your website and the security solutions that you need to implement along with them.

9. Helps Protect Your Business’s Reputation:

No amount of money can replace the trust that is lost when your website is hacked. Your reputation in your field drops and nobody will be willing to conduct business with you due to your lax security measures. This can have a serious impact on your company and can lead to its ruin.

Quarterly security audits can help ease of this burden as they help you remain complacent with regard to your security protocols and in thus keeping your customers trust and your reputation intact.

In this article we have highlighted the need of having quarterly security audits and provided various reasons supporting the argument. We hope that you follow this advice and implement such security standards for your business as well.