Strong, effective internal controls are crucial to developing an efficient operating environment that drives business growth. Good internal control activities can help organizations deliver value to stakeholders and achieve strategic objectives, while also assuring compliance with applicable laws, regulations, and industry best practices. This guide will take a deeper look into internal controls monitoring, along with suggestions for how to make the process easier.

Organized cybercriminals are leaving traditional bank robbers in the dust. Nowadays, the banking sector’s most significant security concerns come in the form of online threats. Banks and other financial institutions process millions of transactions daily, with the majority of the transactions done via digital payment transfer platforms. For that reason, banks have become enticing targets for cybercriminals.

Today’s organizations are vulnerable to all kinds of cyberattacks, which NIST (the National Institute of Standards & Technology) defines as an event that disrupts, disables, destroys, or maliciously controls a computing environment, destroys data integrity, or steals controlled information. Expert security teams know that attackers might compromise the enterprise network, systems, or applications; or steal data at any time through any number of means.

As organizations migrate to the cloud and adopt more “as-a-Service” technologies, identity and access have become the perimeter. Remote workforces mean that limiting access according to the principle of least privilege is a fundamental security control. As part of securing applications and networks, organizations need to focus on users with privileged access because they pose greater insider and credential theft risks.

Compliance is an essential part of any business. From a corporate perspective, it can be defined as ensuring your company and employees follow all laws, regulations, standards, policies and ethical practices that apply to your organization. In the context of information security, it means ensuring your organization meets the standards for data privacy and security that apply to your specific industry.

Conducting a regular risk assessment is an integral part of any organization’s overall risk management program — and sometimes even a legal requirement, depending on your industry, contractual obligations, or the number of persons you employ. A risk assessment is the systematic process of identifying threats or hazards in your work environment, evaluating the potential severity of those risks, and then implementing reasonable control measures to mitigate or remediate the risks.

Learn about the methods cybercriminals use to exploit passive and active attack vectors so you can better protect your business or organization from cyberattacks. Cybercriminals will use any means they can to penetrate your corporate IT assets and exploit any vulnerabilities they find. Your ability to predict and prepare for these incidents could mean the difference between preventing a data breach and recovering from one.

Risk is inherent to all businesses, regardless of your industry — and to prevent those risks from causing harm, you must first know what threats you are facing. The foundation of any successful risk management program is a thorough risk assessment, which can take many forms depending on what methodology best suits your needs.

Enterprise organizations and government agencies worldwide are focused on strengthening their computer networks against the risk of a cyberattack. However, a cybersecurity program is only as strong as its weakest link – and that link is often an employee. Yes, employees remain the biggest cybersecurity threat today. So, in addition to putting the right security controls and tools in place, your Information Security team needs to create a more risk-aware culture.

Around the world, and particularly over the past few years, regulators have been looking for ways to strengthen the resilience of the financial sector. In the European Union, regulators within the European Commission (EC) have taken a concrete step to meet this objective through the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA). The EC published a draft version of DORA in September 2020.