About Varun Prasad
Varun is an IT audit and risk management professional with 15+ years of progressive experience that he gained through diverse roles within Big4 consulting firms and world-leading corporations across various regions. Throughout his career, he has managed and executed a variety of IT audit-based projects from end to end.
He holds a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from West Virginia University and the CISA, CISM, CCSK, CIPM, and PMP certifications.
In his current third-party attestation role, Varun has led and delivered countless attestation engagements, including readiness assessments and internal-external audits for tech companies of varying sizes and complexity, to help build trust by addressing the security and privacy compliance requirements of customers and other stakeholders.
He has provided various audits, advisory, and assurance services, such as SOC 1 and SOC 2 pre-assessment/examinations, internal audits, compliance audits (NIST frameworks etc.), risk assessments, financial external audit support, agreed-upon procedures, business continuity and disaster recovery planning, system security reviews, and privacy.
Varun has experience working with a wide range of industries, including technology, aerospace, financial services, insurance and benefits, and manufacturing, with a strong focus on cloud services.
He remains actively engaged with various professional organizations, served on different committees and working groups around IT audit and assurance standards and practices, and has published articles related to such services. He is a board member of the ISACA San Francisco chapter and part of the ISACA IT Audit and Assurance advisory committee.
About the experience in auditing
My favorite part of being an auditor has always been having the opportunity to get an awareness of and exposure to a wide range of technologies and tools, including the underlying concepts and interrelated principles.
I enjoy understanding and studying the patterns around how similar controls are implemented by various organizations based on their specific goals, risk thresholds, and other constraints. I try to contrast and compare different control environments I encounter, draw the key learnings from them, and apply the same to my audits.
Moreover, I am intrigued by the plethora of cloud security posture monitoring platforms in the market and try to understand their distinctive features and functionalities. Furthermore, I am interested in examining how organizations leverage these solutions based on their unique use cases to strengthen their control posture.
The associated challenge has been the need to learn continually to stay relevant. Due to the constant evolution of technology and the constantly changing threat landscape, knowledge must be updated. As the rapid evolution of cloud platforms with complex application architectures creates new security risks, it is of the utmost importance to continually technically grow while honing audit approaches to provide comfort and assurance around the security systems. with complex application architectures creating newer security risks, it is of utmost importance to keep technically growing while honing audit approaches to provide comfort and assurance around the security of the system.
Looking ahead to the future, with the rapid emergence of AI, I am curious to understand the unique cybersecurity risks it poses and identify control mitigation strategies to protect these systems. With enterprises leveraging AI-based solutions in their routine operations to increase efficiency, it is crucial to ensure accuracy and repeatability, which presents an exciting opportunity for the audit community. Moreover, as privacy regulations and requirements grow, I look forward to learning how privacy principles can be better implemented and audited in multi-cloud and AI ecosystems.
Varun's experience with MSECB
MSECB has encouraged the conduct of thorough, methodical, and structured audits of management systems to evaluate conformance with various ISO standards. They constantly encourage us to follow audit principles and ethical practices in everything we do. They have been highly professional, collaborative, and effective partners to help deliver ISO certifications for medium and large enterprise clients with complex environments and audit scopes.
I enjoy the fact that MSECB places great emphasis on the planning phase to help provide a foundation for a successful audit engagement. It requires focusing on the finer aspects of the scope, including departments, processes, and locations to be able to include the appropriate areas to the audit scope based on various risk factors and associated materiality. A strong and comprehensive understanding of the organization’s mission, operating environment, and technologies is critical to estimating the time required to test the various controls across the key processes.
The MSECB team has been very flexible to accommodate every client request around scheduling or business priorities. The team is very responsive and gives support working through any process-related or technical queries. They have provided any support required during the engagement to help address challenges through the audit lifecycle. The MSECB team provides vast resources, including process guides and documentation templates that help create standardized tools to aid its auditors. This helps build consistency, accuracy, and high quality in our work.
Being an MSECB auditor gives me credibility and confidence to conduct audits. This credential adds value to my profile and gives me a competitive edge and recognition among peers. Working and collaborating with MSECB has been a great learning experience and a truly rewarding one.
MSECB Auditor Profile
Varun Prasad is an MSECB-approved auditor, conducting ISO/IEC 27001, ISO 22301, and CSA STAR audits since 2022.
He has led and supported numerous audits assessing the information security management systems, cloud security posture, and privacy practices for enterprise SaaS platforms that provide security and network monitoring capabilities. Additionally, he has helped develop and assess the business continuity and disaster recovery program components for large multinational conglomerates.
His auditing and communication skills, as well as his vast experience and knowledge of the field in which he works, make him a great professional to work with.
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