An independent third-party audit provides an unbiased review of security controls and practices. It is frequently required by regulatory standards in sensitive industries, such as finance, to ensure controls are up to the required effectiveness because internal teams may have inherent biases or conflicts of interest. A self-assessment, while valuable, can be biased due to internal influence. Penetration testing is a proactive security measure but does not constitute an independent review of all operational security processes. Monitoring by an internal audit committee will not fulfill the requirement for an unbiased and independent evaluation as required by many regulatory frameworks.