RegTech Simplifies Governance, Risk, and Compliance

As compliance costs skyrocket, standards grow increasingly complex, and the cyber threat environment evolves, organizations are turning to RegTech solutions to automate their compliance processes and improve their overall cybersecurity posture.

Compliance with regulatory and industry standards, such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, FedRAMP, and SSAE 16 SOC reporting, are a burdensome yet necessary part of doing business in the digital world. Organizations operating in highly regulated industries, such as healthcare and finance, face significant compliance challenges, especially when they must comply with multiple standards. HIPAA, for example, applies to any organization that handles medical records, including schools, collection agencies that handle medical debt, personal injury attorneys, and SaaS providers of healthcare software; meanwhile, these same organizations may also have to comply with PCI DSS, SSAE 16 reporting, SOX, and other applicable standards.

Organizations must figure out which standards apply to them, then continually keep up with reporting requirements, audits, and the inevitable changes in those standards as technology and the cyber threat environment evolve. It is estimated that regulatory compliance costs U.S. businesses about $2 trillion annually, and in a perverse twist, small business’s compliance costs are over three times higher than what large companies bear. This heavy burden helps explain why so many enterprise cyber security “plans” start and end with compliance, even though compliance does not equate to data security. It’s not necessarily that organizations don’t care about whether their data is secure, but that they spend so much money and time on compliance, there’s nothing left to tackle cyber security.

Fortunately, technology has made it possible for organizations to achieve compliance and secure their systems and data, at an affordable cost.

RegTech to the Rescue

One of the biggest problems in many organizations is the fact that their compliance processes – or the processes of their third-party compliance providers – are not automated. Some companies still use spreadsheet programs such as Excel for compliance reporting and audits, even though Excel was never meant to be used with the very large data sets produced by today’s complex data environments. But RegTech software, such as Continuum GRC’s IT Audit Machine (ITAM), can.

While the term “RegTech” is most commonly associated with the finance industry, RegTech solutions can be employed by any organization that must adhere to compliance standards, including healthcare, cloud computing, SaaS, education, and public-sector organizations. RegTech solutions utilize big data capabilities and rapid report creation to automate data management and reporting. Instead of multiple, disparate spreadsheets and ledgers, RegTech software creates a centralized repository of all IT compliance requirements with associated controls and automated information flows for audits, assessments, and testing.

Making Sense of Big Data

The big problem with big data is that it amounts to a lot of big noise unless you have the capability to analyze it and derive actionable insight from it. RegTech doesn’t just simplify your compliance processes; it also strengthens your enterprise’s cyber security by providing the advanced data analysis capabilities you need to make sense of your data environment and discover where your vulnerabilities lie. The ITAM, for example, integrates IT governance, policy management, risk management, and incident management. In addition to taking the pain out of the compliance process, it empowers you to document and analyze IT risks, develop mitigation plans, define security controls, and manage ongoing risk assessments so that you can anticipate new and emerging threats and stop them before a breach occurs.

RegTech is poised to transform IT governance, compliance, and cyber security. Organizations that employ this new technology will free up money, time, and human resources to innovate, create, and pursue long-term organizational goals instead of being bogged down in regulatory paperwork and worried about data breaches and other cyber attacks.

The cyber security experts at Lazarus Alliance have deep knowledge of the cyber security field, are continually monitoring the latest information security threats, and are committed to protecting organizations of all sizes from security breaches. We offer full-service risk assessment services and Continuum GRC software to protect companies from data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber threats.

Lazarus Alliance is proactive cyber security®. Call 1-888-896-7580 to discuss your organization’s cyber security needs and find out how we can help your organization successfully simplify Governance, Risk, and Compliance, and secure your systems.

Doxware Leaks Your Private Data if You Don’t Pay the Ransom

Ransomware began grabbing headlines about a year ago, after Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center paid hackers thousands of dollars in ransom after it got locked out of its systems. This large payday apparently encouraged hackers to keep going; a recent survey showed that about half of all businesses reported being victimized by ransomware at least once in the previous 12 months, and a stunning 85% had been hit three or more times. Because ransomware is now ubiquitous, organizations have learned to fight back by restoring their systems from backup drives, thus avoiding having to pay a ransom. Unfortunately,

A doxware attack unfolds similarly to ransomware: Victims attempt to log on to their computers and are greeted by a screen notifying them that their system has been locked down and demanding that a ransom be paid, usually in Bitcoin, for the code to get back in. However, doxware goes a step further, not only locking the system down but also threatening to expose the user’s private or sensitive data. This renders restoring the system from a backup ineffective because it will solve only half the problem.

One known doxware strain notifies users that it has compromised all of their login credentials, contacts, and Skype history onto a server and threatens to forward it to all of the user’s contacts unless the ransom is paid. Other variants are programmed to search the user’s system for files containing keywords that might indicate embarrassing content, such as “nude” or “sex.” In a unique twist aimed at self-propagation, a variant called Popcorn Time gives victims an alternate to paying the ransom: Infecting two of their friends with the malware.

As both Sony Pictures and the Democratic National Committee learned the hard way after their corporate emails were hacked and published on WikiLeaks, having embarrassing information go public can ruin reputations and derail careers. Additionally, the release of scandalous material isn’t the only thing organizations need to worry about; doxware could be set up to target trade secrets, intellectual property, and other confidential information that could be ruinous to a business if it were released. For hackers, this represents the “value proposition” of doxware over ransomware: The fear of financial ruin makes it far more likely that doxware victims will cave in to hackers’ ransom demands or even agree to infect their friends in order to get off the hook. Of course, there is no guarantee that the criminals demanding the ransom will keep their word and not release the information, anyway.

How serious is the doxware threat?

Right now, doxware is a new threat, and attacks have been confined to Windows computers and laptops, but this particular attack vector is so potentially lucrative, there’s no reason to think that cyber criminals will stop there. Doxware would lend very well to mobile devices, where it could be set up to send photos, videos, and text messages to all of the user’s contacts.

The bright side is that since doxware isn’t yet at epidemic levels, organizations have a chance to get ahead of the game and take proactive cyber security measures before it becomes as common as ransomware. Methods to prevent a doxware attack are essentially the same as those used to fend off ransomware: training employees on how to spot phishing emails and other cyber security best practices, deploying antivirus packages that protect against ransomware strains, and maintaining regular system backups. Organizations should also air-gap intellectual property, employee tax data, and other highly sensitive information to make it more difficult for hackers to access, and encrypt the data so that it is useless even if they do manage to get at it.

The cyber security experts at Lazarus Alliance have deep knowledge of the cyber security field, are continually monitoring the latest information security threats, and are committed to protecting organizations of all sizes from security breaches. We offer full-service risk assessment services and Continuum GRC software to protect companies from data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber threats.

Lazarus Alliance is proactive cyber security®. Call 1-888-896-7580 to discuss your organization’s cyber security needs and find out how we can help your organization secure your systems.

Healthcare is one of the most regulated industries in the U.S. HIPAA, or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, requires healthcare organizations and their third-party service providers, such as labs and billing companies, to have data security measures in place protect patients’ private health information (PHI). HIPAA compliance is complex, and the penalties for non-compliance are stiff; if a facility’s PHI is breached, and it is found they were not compliant with HIPAA, the facility could face millions of dollars worth of fines. In some cases, company executives can even be held criminally liable.

C-level executives in the healthcare industry may not understand the intricacies of ransomware attacks or phishing schemes, but they do understand the seriousness of HIPAA compliance. They also fall into the trap of thinking that if their organization is compliant with HIPAA, that means their systems are safe. As a result, they devote most or all of their cyber security resources to complying with HIPAA.

HIPAA compliance is crucial – but a cyber security plan cannot start and end with HIPAA compliance.

HIPAA Compliance Is Only a Starting Point to Protect Patient Data

Today’s healthcare IT environment is highly complex. In addition to electronic health records (EHRs), mobile technology, cloud applications, electronic health exchanges, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices are growing in popularity. These technologies are making it easier for healthcare providers to deliver quality care and are improving patients’ lives, but each new gadget and application means new vulnerabilities for hackers to exploit.

In a recent survey of information security experts conducted by the Brookings Institution, most respondents indicated that they felt HIPAA does not sufficiently address modern healthcare data security issues, mainly because the law is light on specifics. HIPAA compliance is primarily about demonstrating that an organization has met certain documentation and procedural requirements. It does not outline precise technical safeguards.

The proof that HIPAA compliance is insufficient to protect against ransomware and data breaches is in the statistics. Healthcare is the most likely industry to experience a data breach. Nearly 90% of healthcare organizations – and 60% of third-party healthcare vendors – have experienced at least one breach. Nearly 80% have had two or more, and nearly 50% have had three or more.

Why Isn’t HIPAA Compliance Enough?

There are several reasons why HIPAA compliance does not provide full data protection on its own. First, it isn’t meant to. Technology simply changes too quickly for any legislation to keep up. By the time a new set of rules were written, they’d already be out of date! This is why HIPAA focuses on what organizations need to achieve, not on precisely how they should go about achieving it. Second, every organization’s IT environment is different. A data security plan that works well at one facility may fall flat at another. Finally, compliance rules cannot adequately address the threats posed by mistakes, negligence, or malicious acts on the part of a facility’s employees, which cause nearly half of all data breaches.

HIPAA compliance should be the starting point – not the entirety – of a comprehensive, proactive healthcare data security plan.

Many healthcare organizations do not have the resources to handle all of their information security needs in-house; many others don’t know where to start. This is why they should partner with a professional cyber security firm such as Lazarus Alliance. The cyber security experts at Lazarus Alliance have deep knowledge of the cyber security field, are continually monitoring the latest information security threats, and are committed to protecting organizations of all sizes from security breaches. We offer full-service risk assessment services and Continuum GRC software to protect companies from data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber threats.

Lazarus Alliance is proactive cyber security®. Call 1-888-896-7580 to discuss your organization’s cyber security needs and find out how we can help your organization.