Get Ahead Of Auditors

Every business is subject to cybersecurity compliance regulations: from HIPAA to NIST 800-171; to GLBA, PCI DSS, FFIEC guidelines; and data privacy regulations such as GDPR and CPRA.

There’s an auditor waiting to come ensure you are meeting the requirements, and with the recent shift to a hybrid workforce a lot has changed. This means you may or may not be, where you need to be, to pass the audit.

If you want to get ahead of cybersecurity compliance auditors, it’s time for an assessment and setting up cyber resilience in a way that can keep up with the new way you do business – a hybrid workforce, hybrid network, a hybrid everything – essentially, the transition to cybersecurity without walls.

Here are some steps to get ahead of your cybersecurity compliance auditors on your own with the post-pandemic shift in mind. 

1. To conduct your own security assessment, you want to get your compliance regulation and go through the list of items you must meet. That’s pretty straightforward. 
2. Next is checking all of your parameters with cybersecurity in mind, which will involve assessing the security and/or vulnerability of all devices, networks, cloud environments, and such.
3. There are also elements such as the data officers in charge, like with GDPR, where you need to have an assigned chief data officer (CDO). This person needs to have knowledge of every interaction that data has had in and outside of the office.  This is where things start to get more complex due to the overwhelming amount of data and information that needs to get cataloged. Manually tracking is no longer feasible, which is where company’s like NCX Group come into play or a tool that fits the bill. 
4. When it comes to cybersecurity tools and software, they become part of your cybersecurity responsibility and must meet compliance regulations from a vendor risk management perspective or third-party service security perspective.
   • In either case, what tools and software you use, you must also ensure through an assessment, areas of vulnerabilities to ensure you remove risks.

With the basics of a security assessment, you are meeting one part of your compliance regulations requirements.  The next pieces involve:

• Employee cybersecurity awareness training
• Hybrid network security
• Business continuity and incident response plans
• Updated policies and procedures for a hybrid workforce and business environment

Lastly, with the adoption of the cloud to conduct business from home during the pandemic and that is continuing post-pandemic, there is a need to have eyes on your cloud environment to find vulnerabilities as they present themselves. 

Security without walls is an entirely new and different approach to what used to be.  CIOs are experiencing a need to catch up on many different areas due to having spent the last 18 months organizing a hybrid workforce environment, and not working on the cybersecurity posture and cyber resilience in the new environment. 

For anyone who wants more information on security without walls, you find it here: https://ncxgroup.com/2021/10/security-without-walls/

And for any additional support, NCX Group and our compliance regulation professionals, are only a phone call away.

Schedule your free compliance consultation and we’ll go from there.  Book a time here: https://calendly.com/ncxgroup

Photo courtesy of docstockmedia