Chapter 15: Testing and Auditing

In this chapter, we will provide details about testing and auditing your environment, which will help validate controls and ensure due diligence has been executed within your security program. The challenge we face when deploying security controls, hardening configurations, and security baselines, is validating that they are in place and working as designed. The security department may have obligations to the leadership team, board stakeholders, shareholders, and regulators to prove that you have implemented the appropriate recommended controls depending on your business or industry. This is where testing and auditing comes into play by helping provide evidence that controls are in place. These activities can be performed internally or through a third-party company for added benefit. We test to ensure that our controls are doing what they are designed to do. Without testing, we fail to validate whether the controls work, and can't truly understand...