Choosing an Audit Partner that Makes Sure
by Joseph Kirkpatrick / September 20th, 2019
What does partnership look like when your organization is in the middle of an audit? When you choose a qualified audit firm to help you in your audit process, you are choosing a partner for an important compliance journey. How does the audit firm you choose support you? What practices does it implement that enable you to successfully complete your audit process? In what ways is an audit firm helping you on your compliance journey? Let’s look at the traits you should be considering when choosing a partner for your audit.
Choosing a Partner that Supports Your Organization
There is no denying that audits are difficult, but you can confidently achieve your goals when your organization has a quality partner working alongside you on your compliance journey. What are some qualities you can look for when choosing a partner?
- A quality audit partner is one that is experienced in the necessary skills and practices regarding security auditing. Audits are complicated and you need a qualified auditor at your side to check your internal controls, security practices, and policies.
- You’ll want to make sure you’re choosing a partner that doesn’t waste time during an audit. Working with a timely audit firm that stays true to the timeline developed at the start of the audit is important for an organization looking to complete tasks in their compliance journey on an efficient schedule.
- Proper communication is important to creating a system of support and partnership. In order to communicate effectively, the audit partner your organization chooses should have a quality audit team that stays in contact with your organization through every step of your compliance journey.
- The audit process needs to be streamlined to gather data and evidence and properly examine your organization’s controls. At KirkpatrickPrice, the Online Audit Manager enables us to partner with organizations before an onsite visit to make the audit process as smooth as possible.
- Choosing a partner that fits your organization should be reliant upon your ability to trust that the audit firm is independent and qualified. To perform a PCI audit, the firm must have personnel with QSA and PCIP certifications. Only CPAs can perform SOC 1 and SOC 2 audits. To perform a HITRUST CSF assessment, the auditor must be a CCSFP at an authorized assessor firm.
Why KirkpatrickPrice is the Audit Partner for You
KirkpatrickPrice is an audit firm whose goal is to give the support and guidance your organization needs to embark on a successful compliance journey. You don’t have to settle for choosing a partner that conducts an audit and leaves you with unanswered questions and compliance worries. Instead, you can start and end an audit with a firm that wants to see you defeat the most challenging compliance requirements you face. Make sure you’re choosing a partner that will be by your side throughout your compliance journey. Contact KirkpatrickPrice to be supported by the partner your organization deserves to have on its compliance journey
One of the things that we say here are KirkpatrickPrice is that we partner with our clients to help them achieve challenging compliance goals. When you’re going through an audit, it’s very difficult. When you want to comply with a variety of standards that are out there, it’s a very challenging thing to take on. Everybody wants a good partner at their side – somebody behind them providing coaching and guidance, supporting you through your goals. We want to be that type of partner for you. The spirit that we take on is from the first Kirkpatrick on record. His name was Roger Kirkpatrick – first cousins with William Wallace, loyal to Robert the Bruce. Robert the Bruce had a rival and Kirkpatrick was there to support him and fight along his side in order to defeat the rival. We take on that same spirit here in the way that we partner with you. We want to see you defeat the hacker, defeat those challenging compliance requirements that are coming at you from every angle. We will make sure that we are a great partner to you in your challenging compliance goals.
