Audit procedures are the processes and methods auditors use to obtain sufficient, appropriate audit evidence to give their professional judgment about the effectiveness of an organization’s internal controls. Internal controls are the mechanisms and standards that businesses use to protect their sensitive data and IT systems; or as a means of providing accountability on financial statements and accounting records.
Regardless of your industry, regulatory compliance is an important component of ongoing success. Staying on top of your compliance obligations can be challenging, and a strong compliance management program will require a compliance management system.
Insurance companies know how to protect their clients’ homes, cars, and businesses— but protecting the personal information of those customers is a bit harder to assure. While the insurance industry focuses on risk-based analyses for its own underwriting programs, firms also need to apply those same risk management processes to securing customer information.
A SOC 2 system description outlines the boundaries of a SOC report. It contains pertinent details regarding the people, processes, and technology that support your product, software, or service. As a reminder, the SOC framework stands for System and Organization Controls. It is a broad architecture that organizations can use to audit the internal controls of vendors and business partners before entering a relationship with those firms, to assess whether those firms have a robust security posture.
The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation applies to any organization that operates in the EU or that collects or processes the personal data of EU citizens. So if a business in the United States (or anywhere else in the world, for that matter) does handle such data — yes, the GDPR can apply to you. That said, the exact compliance requirements will vary depending on the size of your company and how you process and store the applicable data.
Third-party risk management (TPRM), also known as “vendor risk management” is the process of managing risks introduced to your business by your organization’s vendors, suppliers, contractors, and service providers. Any outside party that plays a significant part in your company’s ecosystem or supply chain is considered a third-party vendor.
Corporate cybersecurity professionals must be on constant alert to avoid the wide range of cyberattacks that can be thrown at them today: malware, ransomware, trojan horses, social engineering, and spear-phishing attacks, to name just a few. Among the most serious of attacks is the advanced persistent threat (APT). An APT is an attack that uses sophisticated methods to gain access to information systems and sensitive information.
It’s the stuff of IT managers’ nightmares and it is coming to a server near you: ransomware attacks, phishing schemes, privacy breaches, and other yet-to-be imagined cyber threats aiming to pilfer the sensitive data stored on your IT systems. Cybercriminals target large companies like Microsoft, Equifax, Expedia, and Barnes & Noble just to mention a few big victims from 2020.
Penetration testing, also known as “pen testing,” is an intentional, simulated cyberattack against your IT systems to find vulnerabilities and test the efficacy of cybersecurity controls. For example, penetration testers can use this tactic to improve web application security mechanisms such as firewalls. Pen testing might involve an attempt to breach access controls to gain access to a private network.
As you go about the work of managing your IT environment, it’s likely that you already apply the Principle of Least Privilege (POLP, also known as “least privilege access”) — probably without giving this important concept a second thought. After all, not every employee in your company has admin rights on your website, or access to your financial accounts.
