In a previous article, we discussed GDPR compliance for businesses in the European Union. Simply put, GDPR changed the way that businesses can use consumer data for marketing and business purposes while giving more control to consumers in terms of how that data is stored, deleted or transmitted. While GDPR is not a standard in… Read More
Risk management and assessment is the practice of assessing an organization’s security systems against possible vulnerabilities and gaps to determine how much “risk” is acceptable as part of doing business. Factors like compliance, emerging threats and changes in technology and business operations all play an immense role in how security experts manage the risk their… Read More
The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) framework of regulations is a relatively new governing document that combines several cybersecurity and risk management requirements to streamline security and compliance for agencies and contractors in the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) supply chain. Even though all DoD agencies do not yet require this framework, its roadmap suggests that… Read More
Compliance and risk management aren’t the same, but they are closely aligned with one another. Companies operating with IT and data-intensive technologies and industries must attend to the reality that risk of breach, damage, or data loss exists in their system and that they will almost always have to manage the balance between optimized business… Read More
Working with federal agencies can be a big boon for enterprise and SMB service providers. Not only are they working in a lucrative and challenging space, but they can also provide critical infrastructural support to the operation and defense of our country. The regulations, however, can prove a nightmare. For example, should you adhere to… Read More
Major infrastructure in the United States is under attack. As more heavy industrial companies, defense contractors and government agencies increasingly rely on cloud platforms and IT solutions to serve their users and constituents, hackers are finding ways to leverage vulnerabilities and steal information. The problem with these attacks is that they are taking advantage of… Read More
Words like cybersecurity and compliance are often interchangeable without much care taken with how they differ. But make no mistake: while they are related practices, both are different approaches to a common problem of cybersecurity threats. Here we break down the differences and, more importantly, why these differences are important for when you have to… Read More
Cybersecurity is all over the news. With the SolarWinds and Colonial Pipelines hack, we’ve learned the hard way that critical infrastructure is something we cannot take for granted. That’s why it is so important that IT providers understand why compliance frameworks like FedRAMP are necessary. Is FedRAMP compliance mandatory? Yes. If you provide cloud services… Read More
With the more recent threats and attacks we’ve seen in both the Colonial Pipeline and SolarWinds hacks, the question of infrastructure security is firmly in the collective consciousness. With President Biden’s Executive Order focusing executive resources to beef up cybersecurity, the efforts of the government are turning towards addressing some of the gaps that have… Read More
ISO/IEC 27001 is widely known, providing requirements for an information security management system (ISMS), though there are more than a dozen standards in the ISO/IEC 27000 family. Using them enables organizations of any kind to manage the security of assets such as financial information, intellectual property, employee details or information entrusted by third parties.
One of our country’s more important assets is its information. The U.S. IT infrastructure carries private information covering things like financial information, private information, defense and military information or information that is critical to the operation of government agencies. Some information is classified, and some, while not deemed sensitive enough to classify, are protected as… Read More
CMMC certification is rolling out in RFPs in the defense and federal security compliance space. This framework promotes a uniform approach to security to protect important, unclassified data that passes through third-party vendors working with federal agencies. To ensure that companies meet their compliance requirements, CMMC leverages outside certified assessors to serve as a third-party… Read More
“Resiliency” is a word that gets thrown around a lot by professionals interested in the continuity of business in times of disruption. The fact is that depending on the industry and business model, resiliency is more akin to a science than anything else. Professionals measure things like logistics, statistics, risk and operational effectiveness to balance… Read More
The complexity of healthcare service demands robust technical infrastructure. Advances in patient treatment, research, diagnostic tools and even predictive analytics and AI have pushed technologies available to healthcare providers, which means that these organizations turn to expert providers to give them new tools and features to revolutionize their patient care models. This increased reliance on… Read More
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard is a voluntary security framework to help protect customers and merchants against the theft of credit card data during POS transactions. Like many other compliance frameworks, PCI DSS has continually evolved over the years to match new technologies and new threats to the privacy of consumers shopping online… Read More
Any IT or cloud provider working with the government needs to show that they are secured against data breach or theft. As the SolarWinds hack has demonstrated, our interconnected technology systems are under attack from outside entities who want to gain access to critical civil, military, and industrial data and undermine our security. That’s why… Read More
The Department of Defense has made a significant push to improve the security of its cyberinfrastructure and supply chain (known as the Defense Industrial Base), and the result of this push is the Cybersecurity Maturity model Certification (CMMC) initiative. This framework uses existing security guidelines to provide an overview of necessary security requirements for federal… Read More
While online retail isn’t a new phenomenon, many retailers are still behind when it comes to proper security measures for this form of business. With fraud claims and chargebacks rising exponentially in 2021 due to quarantine and increased online customers, these security measures related to PCI DSS eCommerce are only becoming more necessary, not less.… Read More
StateRAMP, like any other compliance framework, includes several reports to document a provider’s progress through certification for the Program Management Office (PMO). As of February 2021, however, the PMO is still spinning up its resources and and StateRAMP reports templates. As such, many required report templates are slated for availability on the StateRAMP website but… Read More
As Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) work with State agencies, many of them are undergoing StateRAMP certification. Fortunately, StateRAMP is much like FedRAMP in that it follows several of the same guidelines, requirements, and process structures. Here, we’ll break down one of the basic aspects of StateRAMP Impact Levels. The StateRAMP Impact level directly relates to… Read More
The news cycle for anyone connected with cybersecurity has been dominated by information regarding the SolarWinds hack. This breach, starting with a single cloud and security provider, has now become a national emergency as more and more private institutions have become infected with potentially dangerous results. As this situation unfolds, we wanted to touch base… Read More
In December 2020, Chinese researchers claimed to have developed the fastest quantum computer in the world. This computer, built using quantum particles and using light as a medium, can perform calculations exponentially faster than classical computers. What is currently the bleeding edge of computing and scientific research tends to become the norm at some point,… Read More
The reality of a world of always-connected customers and cloud platforms is that hackers are overwhelmingly targeting managed service providers. The main question posed in that article was how managed service providers could protect their clients with proper security measures. Here, we want to take this a step further to suggest that these managed service… Read More
Managed service providers carry a few additional burdens that many traditional IT companies don’t. Because the products and services of a managed service provider are used by different businesses, often in different industries, there is a balancing act between managing their own security needs and the needs of their clients. Different responsibilities, requirements, and approaches… Read More