Managing audits can be a time-consuming and resource-intensive process. An audit for a single framework requires you to establish an audit timeline, create and distribute policies for employee review, collect evidence, answer any follow-up requests or questions from the auditor, remediate any deficiencies, and more. And you have to complete these activities not just once, but on a recurring basis (often annually) to maintain compliance.

If pursuing compliance with multiple frameworks, you’ll have to juggle these responsibilities for multiple audits at the same time. This is likely considering that almost 70% of service organizations in 2023 said they need to demonstrate compliance with at least six different frameworks across information security and data privacy.

Managing these audits informally or on an ad-hoc basis can take significant effort and lead to inconsistencies, wasted resources, missed tasks, and increased risk of non-compliance.

In today's fast-paced business environment, having a defined audit management process is not just more efficient — it can also improve your organization’s ability to meet regulatory and framework requirements. In this blog post, let’s explain what audit management is, why it’s important, and how software can improve the process. 

What is audit management?

Audit management is the systematic approach to overseeing the entire audit lifecycle—from planning and execution to reporting and follow-up. It encompasses scheduling, managing resources, documenting results, and ensuring compliance with internal policies and external regulations and standards. Having a structured process in place to manage multiple or recurring audits helps organizations ensure thorough preparation and oversight while minimizing inefficiencies and errors.

Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of audit management below.

Benefits of audit management

Adopting a systematic approach to audit management provides several key advantages:

• Improves audit planning and organization: By having a structured process, organizations can better plan audits, allocate resources, and establish clear timelines. This ensures that all audits are conducted in a timely and organized manner.
• Promotes risk-based auditing: A thorough audit management process allows for the identification and prioritization of high-risk areas, ensuring that audits focus on the most critical aspects of the business.
• Enhances accuracy and thoroughness: With a well-defined audit approach, teams can ensure that no critical areas are overlooked, resulting in more comprehensive and accurate audits.
• Ensures alignment with regulatory and internal standards: Audit management helps ensure that all audits are conducted in accordance with relevant regulations and internal policies, helping organizations stay compliant and avoid costly penalties.
• Facilitates effective communication and reporting: A formalized audit process creates a structured environment for documenting and reporting findings, making it easier for stakeholders to understand and act on the results.
• Supports continuous improvement: By tracking audit outcomes and implementing corrective actions, audit management drives ongoing improvements in processes and controls, ultimately strengthening organizational performance.
• Increases accountability and transparency: A structured audit management process assigns clear responsibilities to team members, ensuring accountability at every stage and creating a transparent audit trail.

The stages of audit management

To implement an effective audit management process, it’s helpful to understand the different stages of the process. Here’s a brief overview of those stages:

1. Planning

Audit planning sets the foundation for the entire process. During this stage, objectives are defined, the audit team is assigned, and timelines are established. This phase also includes identifying relevant frameworks and requirements, determining audit scope, and conducting a gap analysis to identify gaps between what is required by the framework and what is currently in place.

2. Fieldwork and execution

In this stage, the audit team conducts tests and gathers evidence to evaluate the effectiveness of internal controls to determine whether the organization is adhering to framework requirements. The organization being audited may need to answer questions or follow-up requests from the auditor and participate in on-site inspections and interviews if necessary.

3. Reporting

After fieldwork, the audit team compiles their findings into a comprehensive report. This report should include areas of non-compliance, recommendations for corrective action, and any necessary follow-up audits. The organization must read and disseminate these results to ensure the appropriate stakeholders understand the findings and next steps.

4. Follow-up

The final stage involves ensuring that corrective actions have been implemented based on the audit findings. A follow-up audit may be conducted to confirm that all issues have been addressed. This stage helps organizations continuously improve their compliance status and overall security posture. 

Audit management best practices

To ensure an effective and efficient audit process, follow these best practices:

• Establish audit scope and objectives first: Establish the audit scope and objectives will help focus audit efforts and tie activities to specific business goals, such as maintaining regulatory compliance, fortifying your overall security posture, or improving operational efficiency. 
• Limit scope where possible: Defining scope is one of the most important steps in preparing for an audit. Including too much in your audit scope may force you to waste time and resources putting controls in place for risks that don’t exist for your organization. It will also make the audit longer and more costly to complete. So you want to limit scope to only necessary data, information, software/tools, personnel, cloud resources, and/or documents. Think of this like trimming the fat. However, don’t make your scope too narrow. This may lead to you overlooking security risks, leaving your business vulnerable and not providing customers with the depth of assurance they need to trust you with their data and business. It can also lead to additional unanticipated requests being added into your audit after it starts, which will add more work late in the audit process.
• Confirm scope with your auditor as soon as possible: Confirming scope with your auditor as soon as communications begin with them can help ensure everyone is on the same page and there is no scope creep. Scope creep occurs when the auditor starts looking at data, software, personnel, resources, and other items not included in the agreed-upon scope, which can affect the accuracy and reliability of their audit findings.
• Conduct risk assessments before the audit: Conducting a risk assessment before an audit enables your team to prioritize areas of concern by identifying potential risks and their impact on the organization. This helps ensure that remediation efforts and resources are focused on high-risk areas where non-compliance could result in significant financial or reputational damage. This also helps ensure compliance with any risk assessment-related framework requirements.
• Maintain detailed documentation throughout the audit process: Proper documentation is crucial for ensuring that all steps in the audit process are tracked and can be reviewed, ensuring compliance and accountability.
• Foster collaboration between audit teams and other departments: Establish processes for collaboration and communication between audit staff and operational teams to ensure that everyone has a clear understanding of goals and findings, leading to better compliance outcomes.
• Establish clear communication channels for reporting findings: Having well-defined reporting structures allows for faster dissemination of audit results and ensures that corrective actions can be taken promptly.
• Regularly update audit criteria to align with current regulations: Compliance requirements change frequently, so it’s essential to review and update your audit criteria regularly to stay aligned with new standards.
• Incorporate continuous monitoring to stay proactive with compliance: Rather than waiting for annual audits to identify and remediate gaps, implement continuous monitoring to catch compliance issues early and address them before they become bigger problems.
• Use automated tools to manage audits efficiently: Modern audit management software or compliance automation software can automate tracking and reporting, helping streamline the audit process and improve accuracy. Automation also helps eliminate repetitive, manual tasks, allowing teams to focus on higher-level decision-making and improving overall audit efficiency.

Audit management software

Audit management software is designed to simplify the complexities of the audit process. These platforms help automate tasks such as compiling documentation, scheduling recurring tasks like user access reviews, and reporting, which reduces human error and enhances audit accuracy. By centralizing audit data and automating key steps, audit management software reduces the administrative burden, accelerates the audit timeline, and ensures organizations can stay compliant with minimal disruption.

Let’s take a closer look at the numerous advantages that audit management software provides:

• Saves time and resources with standardized procedures: Automated processes reduce the time needed to complete audits, allowing organizations to use their resources more efficiently while ensuring compliance.
• Ensures consistency across audits: Standardizing processes ensures that each audit follows the same procedures, reducing variability and increasing accuracy. This helps organizations maintain uniformity in their compliance efforts.
• Helps organizations comply with regulatory requirements: By automating the process, audit management ensures that all necessary regulations are met, reducing the risk of fines or sanctions for non-compliance.
• Reduces human error and streamlines data collection: Automation minimizes manual entry, reducing the potential for mistakes and speeding up data gathering. This helps auditors focus on analysis rather than administrative tasks.
• Improves communication between auditors and departments: A centralized platform for audit management facilitates better collaboration and transparency across teams and between your organization and the auditor, ensuring that everyone is aligned on audit goals and findings and that unnecessary back-and-forth communication is minimized. 
• Enhances transparency and accountability in the audit process: With clear records of all audit activities and responsibilities, it’s easier to track progress and hold individuals accountable for their roles.