If your company is a service organization and your customers trust you with their data, you may need to pass a SOC 2 (System and Organization Controls 2) audit. Compliance and certification are the goals of a SOC 2 audit. Because the integrity, confidentiality, and privacy of your customers’ data are on the line, they’ll want you to prove that you have the internal controls in place to protect that data. The SOC 2 compliance audit gives them that assurance.
For organizations that manufacture any type of product, overall quality and customer satisfaction are extremely critical. This is particularly important for companies that manufacture complex products, such as vehicles or medical devices. Note that vehicle manufacturers, particularly in the United States but also in other countries, have established their own quality standards for third party suppliers.
The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC), drafted by the Department of Defense (DoD), is a new standard set to enhance supply chain security and augment the NIST SP 800-171—Protecting Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) in Nonfederal Systems and Organizations. A key difference between the NIST SP 800-171 and a CMMC is the removal of a self-attestation component in favor of a third-party assessor model.
Every company that uses computers and the Internet should be concerned about information security and particularly, network security. The number of threats each company faces is growing every day. Whether it’s SPAM, malware, spyware, phishing or virus threats or users who walk out the door with proprietary information or sensitive data, the threat and risks are potentially damaging and costly for that company.
In a world where customers gravitate towards the best products and services, upholding high levels of quality as a business is a no-brainer. Being quality-centric in all your business processes ensures you can steer away from common errors. It can also improve your overall productivity as well as improve your customer retention rates. While there are various standards you can follow to improve the quality of your daily operations, the ISO 9000 standard remains to be one of the best. Even better, it is recognized globally, which could make it easier to do business the world over. The ISO 9000 family consists of five standards.
Compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 is a legally mandated must for all U.S. public companies and some other entities, as well. But meeting the requirements of this important law can be incredibly difficult. Preparing for a SOX compliance audit requires so much work that companies often designate entire teams full-time to the task. The law is that complex.
The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) framework goes back to the year 1992. The industry was looking for an internal control framework, and the COSO Internal Control Framework was the answer. There are three COSO compliance disciplines, five internal control components, and 17 principles focused on internal controls.
If you want confidence that your organization is meeting its core business goals, you need internal audits. If you want to save your organization time and money and keep everything running like a well-oiled machine, internal audits will help you get there. If you want to protect your enterprise against fraud and prevent fraudulent practices, internal audits are key.
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) defines the framework for protecting cardholder data. The framework was developed by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) and enables organizations to assess how well they are protecting cardholder data, training staff, and conducting PCI DSS audits. PCI compliance and accepting credit cards go hand in hand.
Each month, Reciprocity highlights companies that have earned compliance certifications for information security frameworks. Here’s our July 2020 roundup of compliance news from around the United States, and around the world.
