Pricing for a cloud security audit depends on scoping factors, including what type of cloud you use, which cloud provider you use, how complex your cloud environment is, physical locations, third parties, and audit frequency.

The average cloud security audit can take anywhere from weeks to months, depending on your level of preparedness and staff’s availability for interviews and control demonstration. To satisfy the requirements for an engagement, the auditor must validate scope, perform testing procedures, and document conclusions. These steps require time from the service organization’s management, which can be compressed or extended to meet your timeline needs. You can save time by leveraging the Online Audit Manager to maintain the audit evidence you need for compliance.

Industry standard is to schedule a cloud audit to be performed annually or when significant changes are made that will impact the cloud environment. These changes could be critical

controls changing, adding services to the cloud, adding large data sets to the cloud, or new team members.

Maintaining an audit process that covers each fiscal year will demonstrate a commitment to compliance and ongoing testing of controls, which ultimately contributes to the health of your organization.

In every cloud security engagement, the Auditor is required to maintain communication with management and those charged with governance. Other team members involved in the audit could come from anywhere in your organization, ranging from IT to development to compliance officers – anyone with the appropriate responsibilities for and knowledge of the matters concerned in the audit.