Internal Security Audits Play Critical Role in Preventing Breaches: PwC

A strong internal audit can be the difference between catching a security failure and spending weeks and months doing a forensic investigation of a breach.

With this in mind, professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) released a whitepaper today outlining how internal audits have become a key pillar of security strategies in the age of data breaches and what companies can do to overcome some common hurdles to audit effectiveness.

"Internal audit departments need strong governance, which leads to respect, credibility and visibility," said Carolyn Holcomb, leader of PwC's Risk Assurance Data Protection and Privacy practice."If they don’t have the right visibility or governance, they’re just not heard and unfortunately, this happens frequently." Even with compliance regulations in place, most companies tend to do the minimum, so strong governance is important to make sure the regulations are effective at providing a level of security, she said.