How to audit your outdated security processes in 3 steps [Downloadable Template]

As your business grows, there are new demands of the security team, like adding additional  compliance frameworks, more security questionnaires, or new, advanced requirements from large enterprise customers.

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Over time, these pressures can cause your security processes to become outdated, inefficient, or difficult to scale. Conducting a security process audit helps you identify gaps, reduce risk, and ensure your security program evolves alongside your organization.

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In this guide, we'll walk through a simple, three-step approach to auditing outdated security processes, along with a template to help you prioritize and improve them.

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What is a security process audit?

A security process audit is a structured review of your organization’s security workflows, tools, and controls to identify inefficiencies, reduce risk, and improve scalability.

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It helps security teams understand which processes are outdated, where manual work can be reduced, and how to better align their security program with business growth.

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Now that you have the formal definition of what a security process audit is, let’s walk through how to conduct one in three steps.

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Step 1: Take inventory of your security processes

Begin by evaluating the current state of your security program. Identify all security tasks your team is responsible for across a typical week, month, and year. Consider the cadence of these tasks, the tools and processes needed to accomplish them, which teams you need to work with, and identify which processes don’t have defined steps. 

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Also factor in your organization’s risk and maturity. What risks do you need to manage and mitigate? Which frameworks can strengthen your organization’s security posture? Which important security measures are missing from your current program?

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Template actions: 

• Make a copy of this template. 
• In the first column of the “Task Tracker” tab, list each security task you or your team are responsible for in a new row. 
• For each task, input the following information in the corresponding row
  • Cadence: How often the task is performed
  • Process: Any existing processes or documents about how the task is done
  • Stakeholders: Other teams who need to perform portions of the task to complete it

Step 2: Prioritize outdated security processes

Once you have a clear overview of your security tasks, assess each process to determine which ones to update first. Conduct a scoring exercise to help  prioritize which processes to update. This should be based on potential impact, time saved, risk reduction, and improving the workflows with your cross-functional partners. 

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Template actions:

• Using the template you just created, give each of the tasks you listed a score based on the scoring rubric above.
• The sheet will calculate the average score for each of your security tasks.
• Right click on the column with the average score and sort from Z to A to see the tasks with the highest score listed first. The highest scoring tasks will have the biggest impact for change.
• With this score in mind, identify which tasks to update. Indicate which you will update and which you won’t by using the dropdown in the “Update?” column.

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Step 3: Create a plan to improve and scale

After identifying high-impact areas, it’s time to take action and improve them. Consider how they can be centralized into one, or a few systems, integrating them into existing workflows, and automating tasks.

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Many organizations use a trust management platform to streamline and scale their security program. Platforms like Vanta help centralize evidence collection, automate workflows, and reduce the operational burden of maintaining compliance.

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Template action: 

• Identify some of the top areas of opportunity for your current processes and create solutions. 
• Consider finding a platform that offers centralization, integration, and automation for a majority of the processes you’ve identified to streamline your program and limit the number of tools you use to manage your security.

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To go deeper after your process audit, download our guide, Growing pains: How to evolve and scale inherited security processes, for practical advice on prioritizing improvements, streamlining workflows, and building a more scalable security program.

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