PCI compliance is a hot topic these days. While payment processing seemed like the domain of large enterprises and retailers, the expansion of cloud-based processing and online storefronts have blurred the lines between processors, merchants and secure, compliant systems. Many organizations seek their PCI compliance certification to cover their bases with payment processing and data… Read More
The unveiling of CMMC 2.0 last November raised a lot of questions, but also brought a lot of relief. The streamlining of security around Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) will help defense agencies and contractors better secure their systems without burdening them with operational overhead. This is crucial for organizations who want to support these agencies… Read More
The Service Organization Control (SOC) standard is a well-known, but often misunderstood, approach to cybersecurity. It’s not mandatory, it has several methods, and some attestations involve different types of reports and assessments. Sometimes, the most difficult challenge is understanding the breakdown between reports. While SOC 2 is the most well-known and deployed assessment on the… Read More
FISMA is one of the foundational cybersecurity documents in the U.S. government. Its passage in 2002 and subsequent update in 2014 have defined the security landscape for federal IT systems and associated contractors. However, a one-two punch from Congress and the President has changed things again. With recent cyber threats causing major damage to public… Read More
Security isn’t simply something to consider during audits. In today’s evolving threat landscape, new attacks are emerging every day, and security experts are racing to stay ahead of them. The best approach to mitigating security is to maintain proactive cybersecurity practices, including testing, self-assessments and application scanning. Because many organizations are using or deploying web… Read More
We’ve already been seeing the changes for months now: new, robust cookie acceptance disclaimers, longer and more involved data collection forms and an uptick in fines for U.S. companies operating in the European Union. Companies in the United States are starting to understand their regulatory responsibilities under EU law, but few actually understand the scope… Read More
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a set of regulations enforced in the European Union to protect consumer data privacy and instill new controls over data ownership and use. While only having jurisdiction in the EU, this law has had a major impact on how companies do business in Europe, especially digitally. Here, we’ll… Read More
Government agencies and contractors in the supply chain face threats every single day. If you haven’t read the news lately, our national infrastructure and data systems face significant challenges in maintaining the security and integrity of their devices, applications and network resources. When agencies and contractors want to connect to any sensitive system, the Department of… 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
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
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.
“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