Cyber Security Audit

An independent audit of whether your cyber defences would actually hold — governance, controls and incident readiness tested against recognised frameworks and reported in board language.

Speak to a Specialist Call 020 8567 3451

Most organisations' confidence in their cyber security rests on two fragile foundations: the assurances of the people who built the defences, and the absence — so far — of a visible breach. Neither survives contact with an attacker, an insurer's questionnaire or a regulator's post-incident review. Boards are now personally expected to oversee cyber risk, and 'IT said we were fine' is not oversight.

Acumon's cyber security audit provides the independent view: we assess your controls against recognised frameworks, test the governance and human layers where most breaches actually start, examine your readiness for the incident you have not had yet, and give the board a graded, prioritised picture of where it really stands.

Framework-Based, Not Fear-Based

We audit against established reference points — Cyber Essentials and its five technical control themes, the NCSC's guidance for boards and organisations, and the control families of ISO 27001 where your maturity warrants it. Framework-based assessment produces something a checklist scan cannot: a defensible statement of where you stand against a recognised standard, which is exactly what insurers, customers and regulators increasingly ask for.

The Controls That Stop Real Attacks

The audit concentrates where incidents actually begin: identity and access — multi-factor authentication coverage, privileged accounts, joiner-mover-leaver discipline; patching and vulnerability management against what is genuinely exposed; email and phishing defences; backup segregation and restore capability, because ransomware's first target is your recovery; and the monitoring that determines whether an intrusion is a contained event or a six-month occupation. Each control is tested against evidence: coverage reports, configurations, logs — not policy documents.

Governance and the Human Layer

Technology is the smaller half of cyber security. We examine how cyber risk is owned and reported to the board, whether security spending follows risk or habit, how staff awareness is built and tested, and how third parties with access to your systems and data are vetted and monitored. Most serious incidents pass through a person or a supplier before they touch a firewall — an audit that skips this layer audits the wrong thing.

Incident Readiness

Every organisation now operates on the assumption that some incident, someday, succeeds. We audit your readiness for that day: whether an incident response plan exists and names real people, whether it has been exercised, whether backups have actually been restored under time pressure, whether regulatory notification duties — including UK GDPR's 72-hour window — are understood, and whether cyber insurance terms match the reality of your controls, since claims are increasingly tested against the answers given at proposal.

What the Board Receives

The output is a board-usable report: your position against the chosen framework, findings graded by exploitability and business impact, a prioritised remediation roadmap distinguishing urgent exposure from maturity improvement, and the evidence base behind each conclusion. Where deep technical testing such as penetration testing is warranted, we say so, help you scope and commission it well, and interpret the results into the same board-level picture — an audit tells you where to point that spend before you make it.

What You Get With Acumon

Independent cyber controls audit against Cyber Essentials, NCSC guidance and ISO 27001 control themes
Identity, access and MFA coverage tested against evidence, not assertion
Patching, email defences, backup segregation and restore capability examined
Board governance of cyber risk assessed — ownership, reporting and spend
Staff awareness and third-party access arrangements reviewed
Incident response and UK GDPR 72-hour notification readiness tested
Cyber insurance proposal answers checked against your actual controls
Graded findings and a prioritised remediation roadmap, partner-led

Why Acumon for Cyber Security Audit?

Partner-led delivery by a Chartered Member of the Institute of Internal Auditors (CMIIA)
Cross-sector IT risk experience with deep technical and audit expertise
Board-focused reporting that feeds your wider assurance framework
Flexible engagement models with rapid project mobilisation

Get a Fixed-Fee Quote

Tell us what you need and we'll come back within one business day with a clear scope and a fixed price — no hourly-rate surprises. Call 020 8567 3451 or use the form and we'll be in touch.

Common Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this a penetration test?

No — and the distinction matters. A penetration test probes specific systems for exploitable weaknesses at a point in time; a cyber security audit assesses the whole control environment: governance, process, people and technology. Organisations that pen-test without auditing fix the holes found while leaving the process that creates holes untouched. The audit identifies where technical testing is genuinely needed; where it is, we help you scope and commission it and fold the results into the overall picture.

We are a mid-sized firm, not a bank. Are we really a target?

Mid-sized organisations are now the preferred target, precisely because they hold valuable data and payment authority with enterprise-grade exposure but not enterprise-grade defences. Most attacks are not aimed at you personally — they are industrial: automated scanning, credential stuffing and phishing at scale, which finds the unpatched and the unprepared regardless of size. The attacks are indiscriminate; the consequences are not.

How long does a cyber security audit take?

A focused audit for a mid-market organisation typically runs two to four weeks elapsed: evidence gathering and walkthroughs in the first week or two, testing and analysis after, then a findings workshop before the report is finalised. Your teams' cumulative involvement is measured in days. Larger or multi-entity organisations, or audits paired with commissioned technical testing, run longer — we scope and fix the timetable before starting.

What do cyber audits most often find?

The same short list, almost everywhere: MFA deployed for email but absent on VPNs, admin accounts or critical applications; leavers' access surviving their departure; backups that have never been test-restored, or that sit on the same network ransomware would encrypt; incident plans that name people who left; and insurance proposals answered optimistically. None is exotic, all are fixable — and each is on the standard path of a real attack, which is why we look there first.

Get in Touch

Ready to Sort Your Cyber Security Audit?

Tell us what you need. Within one business day, a qualified accountant will be in touch to talk it through and give you a clear, fixed-fee quote — no obligation.

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