Change management audits and information system risk mitigation

Change Management Audit

While technology and information systems are there in order to make management much more efficient, these systems may also expose an organizations to various risks which might often be serious in nature. These risks increase when changes are brought about in an existing system. In order to minimize such risks it is important that organizations have a change management plan, which is duly audited and tested for compliance before change is implemented.

With the advent and progress in the field of Information Technology, the corporate sector across the globe has increased the incorporation of technology in business practices greatly over the years. Besides assisting in communication and production related tasks, Management Information Systems and knowledge managements are important and integral part of organizational management that play a vital role in ensuring efficiency and quality management. That said, the rapid progressions in technology mean that the preceding technologies become obsolete over a period of time and therefore organizations should be ready to adapt to change. However, there is a room for possible risk factors associated with implementation for such changes and therefore it is important that organizations have a change management plan and change management auditing system in place.

In simple terms, a change management auditing is concerned with minimizing or preventing risks associated with bringing about changes in an organizations usually pertaining to technology. The auditing revolves around assessing risks such as security violation and leakage of information to unauthorized parties, presence of errors or malware in the system, efficiency of information management, designation of duties and authorities and protection of system against third party penetration.

Scope of Audit

The scope of change management audits cover analysis, monitoring and reviewing of procedures within an organization pertaining to change management. It reviews the policies and mechanisms that an organization has in place for testing, monitoring, authorizing, initiation and modification of application and information and recovery and backups of information. Moreover, it also reviews the security systems that an organization has in place for the protection of the information system (Kanter & Pitman, 1995). Audit timelines are important to make sure that the deliverables and set objectives are met as per requirement and in time, and all security procedures and change management plans pass the required standard. Failure to do so might increase the risks such as production of low quality service, third party access to sensitive data or malware or harmful codes being distributed to unauthorized parties.

Test Plans

Testing is an important part of change management audit plans as it ensures that the change management system meets all the required standards before it is finally implemented. Negligence on testing level may result in erroneous application and information being transmitted to the production area. A test plan, besides other thing must include details about the procedures of carrying out tests, the person responsible to carry out tests, the extent of user participation in the tests and the criteria of the acceptance of tests results.

Training Plans

Adequate training plans for the first hand stakeholders and workforce must be in place to make the environment more adaptable to change in order to avoid situations such as reluctance to change and change inertia.

Implementation

Before being passed on to the production area, a change management plan must address all security risks and must pass through all levels of compliance tests. In addition, an emergency change management plan must also be in place, which should also be audited and tested for compliance, in order to deal with unforeseen contingencies (Beasley, Branson & Hancock, 2008).

Conclusion

Organizations work in an environment where they are vulnerable to internal and external security threat pertaining to how information management is done and how information is distributed and how use of information is authorized. Since the incorporation of change mean such information is exposed to risk factors as management systems in the previous system might be minimized or halted as a result of a new change, a proper change management plan needs to be in place to ensure the efficient implementation of change.