Comparison audits are used to highlight changes from one point in time to another. They are valuable to show progress and maturity in your organization’s data protection performance. Benefits are:
- No need to keep track of all changes between audit recalculations
- No need to download multiple audits with Excel manipulations to determine changes
- Work-in-progress updates are shown with recalculations
TIP: Don’t overlook the value of Reports for Excel and Risk Report. You will have many uses for these reports, but you might find that comparisons are easier using the Comparison Stack within Real-Time Audit.
Add to Comparison Stack
After an audit is marked as Complete, the option appears to “Add to Comparison Stack”. This option has replaced both “Recalculate” and “Mark as Complete”.
View comparisons
We recommend you remain cognizant of this functionality for comparisons:
- You must have an audit in the Comparison Stack for a new or open report to show comparisons.
- A comparison audit is not required to create a new audit; they can be added later. After an audit is created, you can add a completed audit to the Comparison Stack. Your new audit report will show comparisons after you choose “Recalculate”.
- Comparisons will only be made between the audit you have open and the most recent audit on the comparison stack that contains the same items as found in the open audit.
- An open audit may be a subset of sections in the Comparison audit. In other words, if you create a new audit or open an older audit containing only a few Compliance sections, and if your most recent audit on the Comparison Stack has all Compliance sections, that full audit will be used for comparison.
- Viewing an audit does not show real-time results – it shows the results of the audit from either when it was created or last recalculated. You can see current status and comparison results by clicking “Recalculate”.
Comparison Audits are used for Compliance and Data Mapping. For Compliance, the audit used for comparison is listed in the “Compared to” column. For Data Mapping, the audit used for comparison is listed above the column headings. Differences between the two audits are highlighted in green for improvement; red for declines.
Sample differences in Compliance:
Sample differences in Data Mapping:
Recalculate with comparison audit
Note: Recalculate for Data Mapping has the same functionality and results as Compliance. The examples in this user guide are for Compliance comparisons.
After making changes to Business Environment & Governance / Program Measurement, we select Recalculate to view the improvements against the comparison audit.
Comparison audits will always highlight differences in green and red. But the Recalculate function operates the same both with and without a Comparison Audit. The audit will always show the most-recent Recalculation, previous recalculations are not saved, and date stamps are not saved. For a historical snapshot, download an Excel sheet before you do a recalculation. We suggest putting a date and timestamp in the downloaded file name.
Remove from comparison stack
Removing an audit from the comparison stack will affect what incomplete audits are compared to. An audit removed from the Comparison Stack will continue to show as the Comparison Audit in these ways: A) an incomplete audit until Recalculate is selected; and B) a completed audit. So if you change the Comparison Stack and wish to see comparisons to a different audit, you need to click “Recalculate”.
To remove from the comparison stack, open an audit that is On Comparison Stack:
From within the audit, choose “Remove from comparison stack”
Note that because this audit is marked Complete, you can only re-add to the Comparison Stack. You may not Recalculate to generate new comparisons.
The removed audit will continue to show as the “Compared to” audit on any incomplete audit until it is Recalculated. To update comparisons on an incomplete audit, open that audit and choose “Recalculate”.
