The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) does a great job of outlining how an organization should go about protecting cardholder data. Most organizations take the best practices from the PCI council and implement a strong information security strategy bent on enforcing PCI standards, compliance requirements, and vulnerability management. What happens when an organization doesn’t follow the rules as they should or they suffer a data breach because of negligence?

System and Organization Controls for Service Organizations 2 (SOC 2) compliance isn’t mandatory. No industry requires a SOC 2 report. Nor is SOC 2 compliance law or regulation. But your service organization ought to consider investing in the technical audit required for a SOC 2 report. Not only do many companies expect SOC 2 compliance from their service providers, but having a SOC 2 report attesting to compliance confers added benefits, as well.

The risk of a data breach with significant financial consequences and damage to brand equity is the fear of most large publicly traded companies. But many smaller businesses wrongly assume they are too small to be on the radar of the threat actors. The truth is that it is all about the data, and small businesses often have less well-guarded and well-defined structures for their data stores.

Congratulations, you have achieved PCI compliance! Now comes the hard part, staying compliant. Remember, it was a great deal of work to get your environment where it needed to be for the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). Organizations spend a fair amount of money getting systems, networks, and people exactly where they need to be for cardholder data protection.

Inherent risk and control risk are two of the three parts of the audit risk model, which auditors use to determine the overall risk of an audit. Inherent risk is the risk of a material misstatement in a company’s financial statements without considering internal controls.

If your organization has a presence in California or does business with California residents, then it probably needs to comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). CCPA compliance is no easy task but never fear: Using this checklist and our CCPA audit guide can help smooth the way.

The Higher Education Community Vendor Assessment Tool (HECVAT) is a security assessment template that attempts to generalize higher education information security and data protection questions and issues regarding cloud services for consistency and ease of use. HECVAT has various versions that are free to use and provide a consistent, streamlined third-party risk assessment framework.

For decision making, “reactive” tends to be frowned upon in the business world. “Proactive” is the preferred mode and has been pretty much since the word was coined (in 1933).

When it comes to building a security program, one of the most frequently overlooked areas is that of vendor management. Organizations focus significant resources on internal security, such as vulnerability scans, centralized log management, or user training, while not extending the same diligence towards their third-parties. Organizations end up trusting the security of their network and data to an unknown and untested third-party. As we all know, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.