Updated as of June 7th 2021 It's an excellent time to be an online retailer. In 2021, over 230 million Americans will be shopping digitally, positioning the United States as one of the leading e-commerce markets. Social platforms are highly influential with millennials, teens, and Gen Z consumers; 50 percent of college students have purchased on Instagram, and 48% of U.S. internet users aged 18 to 34 years have purchased through social media this year.

The term “cloud infrastructure” refers to both the hardware systems and software applications that support a cloud computing environment. This might include cloud storage, virtualization applications, IT management tools, API connectivity, and relevant cloud service providers. In a cloud computing environment, all of the aforementioned IT infrastructure components would be hosted offsite by a service provider and delivered through an internet network.

When safeguarding your business against cyberattacks and data breaches, CISOs and compliance officers can choose from all sorts of information security controls — everything from firewalls to malware detection applications, and much more. Thankfully you don’t have to start from scratch when implementing cybersecurity controls. Many standards and frameworks exist that can help you secure your IT systems properly.

The Risk Management Framework (RMF) is most commonly associated with the NIST SP 800-37 guide for “Applying the Risk Management Framework to Federal Information Systems: A Security Life Cycle Approach,” which has been available for FISMA compliance since 2004. It was updated in December 2018 to revision 2. This was the result of a Joint Task Force Transformation Initiative Interagency Working Group; it’s something that every agency of the U.S.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) defines a transaction as an electronic exchange of information between two parties, to carry out financial or administrative activities related to healthcare. For example, a health care provider will send a claim to a health plan to request payment for medical services.

Every time you log on to the Internet, you put your IT systems and the data you handle at risk. At the same time, it’s also impossible to run a successful business without going online, so a key element of modern business management is a strong cybersecurity risk management program. Why? Because the only people in the cybersecurity field working harder than software engineers are the criminals trying to find a new way to breach the latest network security measures.

Inherent risks include all risks that are present without any security controls. Residual risks are the risks that remain after security controls are implemented. Residual risks are inevitable. Even with an abundance of security controls, vestiges of residual risks will remain that could expose your sensitive data to cyber attacks.This is because the proliferation of digital transformation expands the digital landscape, creating more attack vectors.

NIST is the abbreviated name of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. It’s one of many federal agencies under the U.S. Department of Commerce, and is one of the oldest physical science laboratories in the United States. As a non-regulatory government agency, NIST was originally founded to enable greater industrial competitiveness in the United States. Its focus stems from the mantra, “One cannot manage what is not measured.

Residual risk is the threat or vulnerability that remains after all risk treatment and remediation efforts have been implemented. Even with an astute vulnerability sanitation program, there will always be vestiges of risks that remain, these are residual risks. Because they will always be present, the process of managing residual risk involves setting an acceptable threshold and then implementing programs and solutions to mitigate all risks below that threshold.