To enhance your Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) compliance grade, you must implement one of the most challenging controls in NIST SP 800-53: the Controls, Family: System Information & Integrity (SI) 7 requirement. SI-7 states that organizations must employ automated and centrally managed integrity verification tools to detect unauthorized change. This level of visibility can be...

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...

The value of electronic health record (EHR) systems is immense. These digital records are designed to be available anytime and anywhere, connecting healthcare providers with patient data. EHRs are a central repository of patient medical histories, medications, diagnoses, immunization dates, allergies, lab results and radiology images. With access to this accurate patient information, providers can...

The value of electronic medical record (EMR) systems is immense. These digital records are designed to be available anytime and anywhere, connecting healthcare providers with patient data. EMRs are a central repository of patient medical histories, medications, diagnoses, immunization dates, allergies, lab results and radiology images. With this accurate and up to date patient information...

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...

Many organizations face the challenging threat environment by strategically choosing a security controls framework as a reference for initiating, implementing, measuring, and evaluating their security posture, as well as managing risk. While many frameworks are available, one of the most notable and commonly used is the Center for Internet Security’s CIS Controls. This well known framework has the...

It’s not enough to cast a wide cybersecurity net and hope you catch the adversaries trying to compromise your data. Instead, you need to narrow your focus to make your efforts truly impactful. But which of the countless potential cybersecurity attacks out there should you choose to prioritize? MITRE’s Adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and Common Knowledge (ATT&CK) Framework and the Center for...

FISMA requires federal agencies, and by extension, the foundations, educational institutions, organizations that receive federal funds as well as the contractors that do business with them, to develop, document, and implement information security programs to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the data and systems that support government operations and assets. In meeting...

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...