Compliance Audit
A compliance audit is a formal review of the operations and procedures of an organization to ensure all applicable standards, rules, laws, and regulations are met.
Updated: November 22, 2023
A compliance audit is a formal review of the operations and procedures of an organization to ensure all applicable standards, rules, laws, and regulations are met. Typically, the audit is followed by a report that covers the strength of compliance preparations, risk management procedures, security policies, and user access controls throughout the audit.
An organization can have a clarity about whether they are doing everything they are supposed to with the help of a compliance audit. Any gaps in compliance can be filled by the report and it also makes recommendations for ways to solve issues. The information from the report and audit may vary depending on the organization, whether it is a private or public company, the type of data it handles regularly, and if it stores sensitive financial data.
Audit management software is typically used by organizations to streamline their audit processes and comply with regulations or internal policies. These tools are used by compliance professionals and operations managers to schedule the audits and properly analyze the results.
HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996), PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard of 2006), SOC 2 (System and Organization Controls), SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002), ISO (International Organization of Standardization), Human Resources, Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) are different types of compliance audits an organization may choose to conduct.