Are you weighing your options between integrity management solutions? Evaluating, purchasing, and deploying new software is hard work, especially when you get down to the granular details of understanding which solutions have which capabilities and matching those capabilities to your organization’s particular needs. In an industry buzzing with ever-changing terminology and a profusion of vendors...

The National Information Assurance (NIA) Policy provides organizations with the necessary cybersecurity foundation and the relevant tools to enable the implementation of a full-fledged Information Security Management System. Keeping sensitive data and assets safe is the goal of regulatory cybersecurity frameworks such as the NIA. The NIA policy guides organizations in classifying the impact of...

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) maintains comprehensive reliability standards that define requirements for planning and operating the bulk electric system (BES). Among these are the Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) Cyber Security Standards, which specify a minimum set of controls and processes for power generation and transmission companies to follow to ensure...

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) requires all publicly held companies to establish internal controls and procedures for financial reporting to reduce the possibility of corporate fraud. SOX is not specific on the types of controls that are required, but points to the COBIT framework to provide organizations’ guidance on their IT governance. The Challenge Change is ever occurring in your systems and...

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was enacted to safeguard Protected Health Information (PHI) by mandating procedures and controls to assure the public that critical and private information is controlled from loss of confidentiality, integrity or availability. With few exceptions, an organization is subject to HIPAA if it exchanges data related to the health care...

Federal security managers expect that most federally run systems are actively engaging with FISMA compliance for protecting federal data and systems. However, as we all know, federal information does not remain only in federally operated systems. Data and IT systems connect via the Internet and other networks for business, operations and research. Information about citizens, banking and finance...

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard ( PCI DSS ) was created to help organizations that process credit card payments, secure the cardholder environment to prevent credit card fraud, cyber threats and other security vulnerabilities. The latest version, 4.0, provides specific security guidance on handling, processing, transmitting and storing credit card data to minimize the theft...

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) was created to help organizations that process credit card payments secure the cardholder environment to prevent credit card fraud, cyber threats, and other security vulnerabilities. The latest version, 4.0, provides specific security guidance on handling, processing, transmitting, and storing credit card data to minimize the theft...

There isn’t an industry that hasn’t been affected by cyber threats, and the broadcast industry is no exception. In April 2015, France’s TV5Monde was attacked, resulting in eleven of its channels going dark and its social media outlets commandeered to display pro-Islamic State messages. This was preceded by an attack on WBOC in Salisbury, Maryland, where their Twitter account and website were...

The recently enacted European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires organizations to take adequate measures to ensure the security and privacy of personal data of any European citizen. This supersedes the previous Data Protection directive. As a regulation—as opposed to a mere directive—it directly imposes a uniform data security law regime on organizations that need to comply...

North American electric utility companies constantly balance the need to be audit-ready for NERC CIP compliance against their top priority: ensuring the reliability of the bulk electric system. NERC CIP compliance, especially when approached using manual methods, is complex, time-consuming, and prone to human error. Further, NERC CIP requirements often infer security skill sets beyond those of...

There is a misunderstanding that if you are compliant, you are secure. This isn’t the case. For example, adhering to PCI DSS v4.0 will only allow you to tick the box to say you are PCI compliant in that moment. It gives you a snapshot in time of where you are in your compliance journey. But it won’t prevent your company from suffering a breach—along with incurring fines and reputational damages...