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How resistant is business to cyber shock?
13th April, 2018 | by Jay GreensillCyber attacks are an inevitable threat to businesses operating in today’s technologically-driven world. With the Notifiable Data Breaches Scheme having recently passed into legislation in Australia, timing is paramount for our country’s businesses to have in place plans and strategies to deal with data breaches.
Under the new legislation, Australian businesses are now compelled to disclose if a data breach occurs. It’s clear from the results of PwC’s Global State of Information Security Survey 2018, that while Australian businesses are aware data breaches can occur, they may not realise how seriously it could impact their business. 40% of respondents cited the disruption of operations as the biggest potential consequence of a cyber attack and 39% cited the compromise of sensitive data. What about damage to business reputation and overall profits? There are many examples of how data breaches can negatively impact these aspects of business, with Facebook and Ashley Madison being recent examples.
With this in mind, it’s staggering that 44% of global respondents said they do not have an overall information security strategy. 48% said they do not have an employee security awareness training program. 54% say they do not have an incident response process.
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Why Certification or Regulatory Auditors should not use a checklist
25th September, 2017 | by Andrew BarhamWe know that when we do an audit, we use a checklist to help us remember what to ask and what to look for – and it normally has a place for us to write down what we’ve seen (the evidence). There is normally a column that allows us to mark some form of symbol to show the finding: C for conformance, NC for nonconformance, O for observation, or something similar.
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Training Tips
28th August, 2017 | by Andrew BarhamHere we talk about some of what we’ve learnt in the past 15 years or so of training and assessing people who want to become auditors.
There are many articles written about public speaking which discuss topics including: grabbing your audience’s attention in the first 10 seconds, being commanding and powerful, waving your arms about, being animated. These are good for a presentation that is going to last an hour or so, maybe less, maybe a little more. But do these “rules” apply when you are training people and the training is going to last at least a day – possibly more?
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Writing Procedures; Must, shall, would or could
9th March, 2017 | by Andrew BarhamWhen people write procedures, there often is little consistency in the words they use to form the tense, mood or voice of their sentences. Let me explain…
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Emergency testing- It’s more than just a fire drill
5th December, 2016 | by Andrew BarhamEmergency testing is a criteria for a number of the standards. Being prepared is crucial for both businesses and employees to ensure the best response is taken in the event of an emergency. This article goes beyond the standard fire drill when talking about emergency preparedness.
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Auditor Training Centre Acquired by PwC
27th July, 2016 | by The AuditorLeading assurance, advisory, and tax services firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has acquired Queensland, Australia-based, Exemplar Global certified training provider Auditor Training Centre.
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Who wants to be an auditor – good prospects for young females?
16th May, 2016 | by Tom BarhamHere at PwC’s Auditor Training & Certification, we train a lot of people who want to become auditors.
Because we like a bit of data analysis, we thought we’d crunch some numbers to see who it is that wants to become an auditor.
The results aren’t too surprising, but they do help to confirm a few things that most of us were probably thinking.
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How to become an Auditor
14th March, 2016 | by Andrew BarhamDo you want to be an auditor?
After reading our previous article about Why you would want to be an auditor, you have realised you:
- like meeting people,
- seeing new things,
- being challenged, and
- doing something different each day,
then you have probably realised that you REALLY want to be an auditor right?
That’s great – but not sure how to go about it? Here it is all laid out for you.
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Why recording evidence when writing non-conformances drives the wrong behaviour?
12th February, 2016 | by Andrew BarhamWhen writing non-conformances, you are meant to identify and record the evidence that you saw to justify the non-conformity. While this is correct, it does have a tendency to drive the wrong behavior in that the evidence that you record is all that gets fixed.
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Why Would you Want to be an Auditor?
5th February, 2016 | by Andrew BarhamWhy would you want to be an auditor?
What on earth possesses people to be an auditor? Why would you want to be seen as boring and dull? You sit there with your glasses perched on the end of your nose reading through reams and reams of paper, trying to find the one little bit that’s not quite as it should be, just so you can catch them out. The only time you see an auditor smile is when they find somebody has done something wrong.
Well, if that is your perception of being an auditor you’ve got it all wrong. It’s a great job.
