Modern organizations operate in a complex business landscape. Increasingly, they rely on a plethora of third-party partners, vendors, and subcontractors to generate value, boost competitiveness, and strengthen their bottom line. And yet, these same third parties also create numerous risks that can disrupt the organization’s operations, affect its financial standing, and damage its reputation.
A huge swath of the U.S. workforce doesn’t actually hold a full-time job. As many as 40 percent of Americans work in the so-called “gig economy” — driving for ride-share services, selling handicrafts online, pet-sitting, managing a social media account for a local company, and so forth. Typically, a technology company (Uber, Etsy, Rover, AirBnB; the list is endless) matches those workers with customers who have a need.
The global economy is more connected than ever, generating significant benefits for companies and industries operating worldwide. Nobody, however, is exempt from threats that drive supply chain and manufacturing risk. There is no doubt that the manufacturing industry is beset by numerous risks that affect the company and its human assets.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 is a U.S. federal law meant to protect sensitive electronic protected health information (ePHI). Every healthcare organization (“covered entity”) must comply with its two fundamental rules. In 2013, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) passed the HIPAA Omnibus Final Rule, which expanded compliance requirements to the business associates that also handle ePHI on behalf of covered entities.
Understanding your organization’s cybersecurity posture is becoming more important every day. So how do you know how secure your IT infrastructure really is? One way to get a glimpse into your organization’s security is penetration testing: pretending (or hiring someone to pretend) to be a hacker, attempting to infiltrate your organization’s physical and cyber systems however possible.
Cyberattacks against businesses of all sizes are at all-time highs. Data from 2021 and projections for the future of cybersecurity suggest that the frequency and intensity of these attacks will only continue to grow. At the forefront of most cyberattacks in 2020 was ransomware, a type of malicious malware attack where attackers encrypt your organization’s data and demand payment in exchange for a decryption key to restore access.
A network vulnerability assessment is the reviewing and analyzing of an organization’s network infrastructure to find cybersecurity vulnerabilities and network security loopholes. The assessment can be carried out either manually or by using vulnerability analysis software — although the latter is preferred because it’s less susceptible to human error and usually delivers more accurate results.
An audit universe is a document that details all the audit activities to be carried out by the internal audit function. It consists of multiple and distinct auditable entities, processes, and activities, which can be considered “auditable units.” The number of these auditable units varies depending on the organization’s size, business complexity, and operational scale. In some cases they can run into the hundreds or even thousands.
Regulations have long existed to govern how organizations collect and use information online, as well as what cybersecurity precautions organizations should take while conducting business online. As digital transformation of business processes has accelerated in the last few years, however, that means ever more organizations — large and small — must comply with all those regulations.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was enacted by Congress in 1996 to prevent medical fraud and to assure the security of protected health information (PHI), such as names, Social Security numbers, medical records, financial information, electronic health transactions and code sets. The law is managed by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS).
