Every day we see the rise of new cybersecurity threats and malicious actors that seek to steal or damage your company’s data. A cybersecurity control assessment can identify gaps in your cybersecurity initiatives and allow your organization to strengthen controls to defend effectively against various cyber threats (such as DDoS attacks, computer viruses, and data breaches) and keep your information safe.
Regulations require cybersecurity control assessments, and they are based on your region, industry, data you process, and store and technologies utilized. Two popular cybersecurity risk assessment frameworks many companies use are the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, developed in collaboration with government agencies which is commonly used by companies in the U.S., and the ISO 27001, which covers both the internal information of a corporation as well as that of third-party vendors. Other cybersecurity frameworks include the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS), CIS top 20, and more.
We will explain why cybersecurity control assessments are crucial for your company and show you how RiskQ can help you identify and prioritize gaps and increase cyber resiliency across your entire organization saving time and tens of thousands of dollars.
Cybersecurity and privacy regulations are legal directives that establish mechanisms to safeguard digital assets. These regulations play a significant role in motivating companies to spend money on cybersecurity programs that protect their data.
Take, for example, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), also known formally as (EU) 2016/697. GDPR is an EU law that focuses on data protection and privacy of EU citizen data. This set of requirements, first established in 2018, provides for the rights of the data subjects and the mechanisms to protect those rights. The GDPR was introduced in an effort to reduce cyber fraud in the billions and provide a level of control to individuals over their personal data. The law, comprised of over 100 articles and recitals, also centralizes cyber regulation – streamlining the environment for both EU and non-EU businesses while prescribing no specific security control framework.
When you seek to apply cybersecurity guidelines or standards to your organization, it’s important to choose a framework that works for your particular needs.
Cybersecurity frameworks are a set of standard techniques that are published by governance bodies to help companies design, build and maintain secure systems, processes, and applications. Their goal is to standardize the protection mechanisms used by different organizations and reduce the probability of cyber risks by applying strong controls to prevent or mitigate cyber-attacks.
Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard: PCI-DSS
The payment card industry uses a prescriptive framework named the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS). This is a global guideline with an inflexible set of control tests required for banks, merchants and data processors that process credit card data.
This framework is enforced by the PCI security council and their acquiring banks and is regularly used for security control assessments and to obtain PCI compliance. Non-compliance for banks and merchants may result in fines and possible loss of credit card privileges.
Frameworks for U.S. Federal Agencies and Companies
Federal agencies must use the National Institute of Standards in Technology (NIST) framework. NIST is U.S. technology laboratory and non-regulatory agency of the United States Department of Commerce in charge of creating best practices for agencies and companies to access organizational IT-related controls. The NIST cybersecurity framework is very popular and is used by many companies worldwide.
The NIST Cybersecurity Framework was created as a policy framework of computer security guidance for how private sector organizations in the United States can assess and improve their ability to prevent, detect, and respond to cyberattacks.
ISO Standards
If your system manages information, you have probably heard of ISO/IEC 27001. The International Organization of Standardization (ISO) publishes (and regularly updates) the ISO/IEC 27000 family of standards to address how a management system that is intended to bring information security under management control measures specific requirements for that system from a cyber perspective.
Accreditation certification bodies can certify your company provided it meets the standard after the successful completion of an audit. The way this assessment is carried out will vary from organization to organization – as each industry (and geographical location) has its own specific regulatory requirements.
However, the foundations remain the same in most cases. For example, a cybersecurity control assessment or audit will consist of the following steps:
RiskQ provides clients with any necessary framework as well as with the ability to customize the cybersecurity assessments. We identify the assessment scope prioritize the assets based on financial exposures, find gaps in cybersecurity controls, and prioritize remediation needs – all while staying within your budget.
Many companies struggle with their increasing compliance needs. We provide our customers with a playbook to understand all the requirements of an assessment and what evidence they will need to show the control maturity in the event of an audit. Our clients can also automate many of the evidence generation required to eliminate redundancy and test controls more effectively.
Our integrated cybersecurity tool modules can help your team plan activities and tasks for security assessments that provide security teams with continuous control monitoring. For example, you automate patch management using data from the Vulnerability Management Scanner (VMS), incident prioritization with the Security Incident Event Management (SIEM), threats from Advanced Threat Prevention System (ATP), cyber range data, security awareness data and a host of others.
