The Importance Of Conducting Software Audits To Avoid Costly Penalties

Software vendors are becoming more proactive in auditing their customers' use of their products. Software audits can take several forms, but primarily, a software vendor will request a customer to self-audit and report on its software usage, which is known as a self-audit or a trust-review. If the customer refuses to conduct the self-audit, the software vendor will likely require that the customer avail themselves for a complete and extensive audit of the software usage. However, this could attract commercial risks and may lead to massive cost and financial implications for the customer if the software audit finds that the usage exceeds its software licence.

In this article, we propose the best approach to avoid a costly audit process and licencing penalties is to adopt a proactive and continuous self-audit review. Through a proactive approach, customers can ensure that they have taken steps to ensure that their software usage is in accordance with their software