A cyber audit is, and always will be, a valuable starting point: it reveals gaps, prioritizes risks and provides direction. But this photograph ages very quickly, as the park, uses and threats evolve. To maintain the effort, you must connect diagnosis, remediation and daily supervision in the same management loop.
Cyber audit is essential, but it is no longer enough on its own
A cybersecurity audit compares your organization’s practices to a benchmark, examines configurations and reveals risks that require priority action. In a way, it replaces “impressions” with a documented inventory. This could be an SSI maturity assessment, an organizational audit, a technical audit or penetration testing.
This photograph, however, keeps a date, so even an in-depth pentest cannot permanently attest to the security of a system which continues to evolve. “ A pentest campaign must be understood over time, with regular and planned intrusion tests. It is fully part of a progressive approach which would aim for ISO 27001 certification. » explains Laurent Galvani, pre-sales manager and senior cybersecurity consultant at Fidens by TVH Consulting
Fidens also points out that the pentest evaluates the resistance of a perimeter at a given time. Its value then depends on the translation of the findings into decisions, managers and deadlines.
Moving from diagnosis to an actionable roadmap
More generally, an audit report can contain several dozen recommendations, and not all of them have the same urgency or the same cost. You need to order them based on risk, asset exposure, and effort required.
Some “quick wins” can be achieved by quickly correcting a setting or applying a patch. Other projects, however, require reviewing the architecture, authorizations, business continuity or the relationship with suppliers. The roadmap must distinguish these temporalities. It must also assign an owner to each action, because the CISO cannot, alone, correct a business application, renegotiate a cloud contract or decide the tolerance for the shutdown of an activity. The IT department, business lines, purchasing, legal and management must all play their part in the plan. This organization prepares the ISO 27001, NIS2 or GDPR trajectories. The internal audit and the corrective action plan are elements of maintaining an ISMS over time.
The most difficult part then remains: maintaining this discipline after the first corrections.
Maintain effort when audit is complete
Many organizations address the most visible gaps, then return to on-going management. Unfortunately, this is the best way to see actions without deadlines slip down the checklist and exceptions become permanent…
A continuous posture begins with a living inventory. You must know the exposed workstations, servers, network equipment, applications, software versions and services. This knowledge makes it possible to link a vulnerability to real assets, then to verify that the correction has been deployed.
ANSSI also includes this logic in EBIOS Risk Manager: risk analysis must lead to appropriate measures, then to a monitoring and continuous improvement framework. Its NIS2-related work also requires monitoring vulnerabilities and patches, as well as planning their installation or mitigation measures when a patch cannot be applied.
It is therefore necessary to monitor vulnerabilities, but also configurations, backups, antivirus protections, rights and incidents. This is where supervision meets cyber governance.
RG System Suite brings security into the daily life of IT teams
And how can we not mention here the interest of RMM platforms. An RMM platform does not replace risk analysis, auditing, or a specialized detection system, but it provides the operational visibility necessary to monitor the fleet, centralize alerts and act regularly on the equipment.
RG System Suite is today a very good example of an RMM Platform. The solution brings together in one console the monitoring of workstations, servers and networks, alerts, automation, patch management and remote assistance. It also offers features to check the status of antiviruses, identify unprotected terminals and deploy updates. “ We wanted to restore clarity and control to technicians, and strengthen human expertise. The objective of our RMM platform is to facilitate the monitoring, prioritization and continuous action of IT teams. “. Nadine Pilote, general manager of Septeo IT Solutions, publisher of RG System Suite.
An alert can thus be linked to specific equipment, a documented corrective action and a report produced to check the evolution of the fleet. Data from supervision, corrective actions and interventions thus feed into managementand can meet the priorities set by cyber governance.
Linking cyber governance and IT operations
The cyber firm and the operations team do not view the system from the same perspective. Fidens starts from risks, compliance, maturity and responsibilities. A platform like RG System Suite tracks fleet health, alerts, patches and daily operations. These two readings become useful when they respond to each other. If the audit reveals a critical delay in patch management, monitoring should track the coverage rate, deployment failures, and machines still exposed. If the roadmap requires securing remote access, operations must monitor their use and keep the necessary logs.
An audit can also identify a backup weakness. The teams then translate the recommendation into scopes, frequencies, alerts and restoration tests, which allows the COPIL to have indicators showing whether the measure really works.
This articulation avoids frequent confusion: compliance does not prove the absence of risk, and the accumulation of alerts does not constitute a strategy. Governance provides direction, while operations provides the evidence and deviations needed to reassess it.
Install a continuous improvement loop
The continuous improvement model is broadly based on six actions: evaluate, prioritize, correct, supervise, measure and reevaluate. The audit opens the loop, and the operating data then shows whether the measures have been applied, whether they remain effective and where new deviations appear.
In practice, a regular review can involve the CISO, the IT department, operations and the professions concerned, by following a few understandable indicators: assets not inventoried, overdue fixes, critical alerts not processed, backup failures, open remediations, accepted risks reaching maturity, etc.
If you apply these recommendations, your next audit should not trigger “exceptional mobilization”. It will simply confirm a posture already followed, documented and adjusted, thanks to continuously monitored security. Your objective will be, nothing more and nothing less, to maintain the link between the identified risks and technical reality, week after week. It is this continuity that sustainably reduces your company’s exposure to cyber incidents, much more than preparation concentrated in the weeks preceding an inspection.
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