Go Through a Gap Analysis Without the Stress
by Sarah Harvey / August 27th, 2019
At KirkpatrickPrice, our goal is to partner with our clients to help them achieve their challenging compliance objectives. While many other CPA firms solely focus on performing audits and delivering reports, our dedicated team of experienced Audit Support Professionals and Information Security Specialists are there to guide you through the audit process so that you leave the engagement feeling confident in your organization’s security hygiene and are prepared to tackle your information security needs going forward.
To best serve our clients and to make sure they get the most out of their investment in information security audits, we always recommend that our clients begin their engagement with a gap analysis. What exactly is that?
What is a Gap Analysis?
A gap analysis at KirkpatrickPrice means working with an Audit Support Professional and an Information Security Specialist to identify any operational, reporting, and compliance gaps in your organization and advise you on strategies for remediation. Gap analyses ask and answer, “How are we doing compared to what regulations require?” Instead of jumping into an audit without knowing what your organization should expect, a gap analysis can prepare your organization to remediate any identified gaps.
What Happens if We Don’t Do a Gap Analysis?
We understand that, often times, organizations are eager to start their audit engagement — whether it’s because of first-time jitters or a hard deadline they have to meet. But to put it simply: skipping a gap analysis can result in any number of problems with your engagement, such as unidentified vulnerabilities, delayed projects, and perhaps the most extreme: non-compliance.
How to Get Through a Gap Analysis Without the Stress
When you undergo a gap analysis at KirkpatrickPrice, our efficient processes will help set your organization up for success and allow you to get the most of out your investment in information security audits. Why? Because at the end of a gap analysis engagement, organizations receive a remediation project plan – a document that provides our clients with actionable steps on how to remediate any gaps found, as well as resources that will help guide you through your remediation. In fact, because we’ve found that many of our clients struggle to remediate the gaps found during their gap analyses, thus prolonging their compliance journey even further, these remediation project plans are an essential part of KirkpatrickPrice’s auditing methodology.
Do I Really Need a Remediation Project Plan?
While some organizations may feel like they can tackle their remediation on their own, it never hurts to have extra guidance. When you receive a remediation project plan from KirkpatrickPrice, you’re not only getting access to free resources that you can reference at any time, you’ll also have access to our Audit Support Professionals and Information Security Specialists for consulting purposes. Have a question about how to create a business continuity plan? We can help! Don’t know where to start with creating application development policies? We can do that, too. Remediation shouldn’t prevent you from achieving your challenging compliance objectives, and we’re here to help make sure that it doesn’t.
At KirkpatrickPrice, we’re here to make your audit engagement as pain-free as possible, and that starts with undergoing one of our gap analyses to help prepare you for the audit. Is your organization ready to start pursuing your compliance goals, but is unsure of how KirkpatrickPrice’s gap analysis methodologies will work for your organization? Contact us today to discuss your compliance objectives and how we can help.
