Cloud Auditor: A Brief And Easy Overview (2021)

Introduction

With the increasing prominence of cloud computing over a few years, the need for setting the standards high is also increased. This article will benefit you with a brief knowledge of cloud auditor and aspects of cloud auditing.

1. Cloud audit and cloud auditor
2. Cloud Auditor
3. Cloud computing audit checklist

1. Cloud audit and cloud auditor

Audit refers to the independent examination to express an opinion thereon by obtaining audit evidence through performing different audit procedures such as analytical procedures, recalculation, external confirmation etc. Cloud audit implies a stipulation for presenting the information regarding control frameworks addressed by cloud computing’s service provider. The main aim of a cloud audit is to ensure data availability regarding performance and security provided by the cloud computing service provider. It targets potential customers and makes sure performance and security details are available to them.

2. Cloud Auditor

A cloud auditor is a third party who examines controls of cloud computing service providers. Cloud auditor performs an audit to verify compliance with the standards and expressed his opinion through a report.

Cloud auditor in cloud computing undergoes a series of steps to form an opinion regarding the effectiveness of controls which are mentioned below:

•    Communication 

•    Incidents of security 

•    Network security 

•    Change management 

•    Management of risk 

•    Management of data

•    Susceptibility and remediation management 

•    Leadership commitment to ethical behaviour and transparency. 

3. Cloud computing audit checklist

The following checklist will serve you with a better understanding of the information you need for audits.

• Security

Nowadays, security is one of the most important factors while considering the sustainable performance of a company. Security compliance factor can decide your growth in most cases, and even in some of the circumstances, the long term existence of a company may depend on it.

• Assessment of management

You must understand who is authorized to access services as cloud audit is mainly concerned with what services users can access and the related data. In order to make a necessary response in future in case of an emergency,  it is necessary to log all the actions that a person takes on time.

• Metrics and caution

In order to know the incidents of security, you are required to have a complete idea of data and the alarms which are placed in a particular place. It should also include the number of authorizations done by a failed user within a particular time. Apart from the auditing of the user, the success of your application lies in the control of the individual and how well you react to emergency situations.

• Safeguarding and violation

For this kind of audit, you need to understand how you are safeguarding your infrastructure and how you are controlling and upgrading upon that safeguarding. Unless you are safeguarding your security policies continuously, firewalls and vulnerability scanners are of no use. To test the reasonableness of your security infrastructure, pen tests, and bug recompensate program are great ways. In most security audits, these are enquired.

• Virtue or integrity

Despite the fact that security is an important factor of cloud audits, it is not the only factor that can turn up. Investors may wish to know about the virtue or stability of the application. This information can also include some details of the security. Customers may wish to know the stability of the application and the accuracy of the data processed.

• Workflow and plan

It is important that how you build your application. Stakeholders will care about the code reviews, and all, but customers may not care about them at all. If you can formulate clearly the abrupt practices which your team should follow while developing and testing the applications, you can face challenging things that can crop up during an audit.

• Reliability, data retention and privacy

The reliability of the application is so important in a cloud audit checklist. In case of severe failure of application,  every company should have a disaster recovery plan to cope up with the situation. One of the frequently asked question by cloud auditor is about the privacy of the customers. And coming to data retention, you should get an idea of what information you should collect from customers and how long you are going to maintain it.

Conclusion

The integrity of data in cloud auditing is checked with the help of an entity called a Third-party auditor. The main role of a third-party auditor in cloud computing is a data integrity check. It undergoes activities such as creating hash value for encrypted blocks, linking them and generating signature on them. It checks or verifies the data upon request from the users. This auditing scheme uses an Advanced encryption standard(AES) algorithm for the encryption and the Rivest-Shamir-Adelman(RSA) signature for the calculation of digital signature.

A cloud auditor can perform the evaluation of services provided by a cloud provider generally in terms of controls regarding security, privacy details and performance-related. Some of the top cloud auditors are A-lign, bsi, coalfire ISO, Control case, CPG, EY certify point, Nixu, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Schellman.

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