RegTech Eases Compliance Costs & Strengthens Cyber Security

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.

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.

Why Excel is so Old-School and how to be Cool-School

Cool School -vs- Old School compares assessments done with Excel and the IT Audit Machine.
We get it. We completely understand why you still use Excel as an assessment and audit tool. We suffered through it just the same but we believe that working smarter and not harder which is why we invented ITAM.

The IT Audit Machine (ITAM) is the patent pending, industry changing assessment questionnaire creation tool designed specifically for the governance, risk and compliance (GRC) market space but where infinite possibilities exist even outside of the GRC and cybersecurity realms due to the intelligence and simplicity of the patent pending ITAM application framework.

Typical usage includes Audit and Compliance Assessments associated with FedRAMP, PCI DSS, HIPAA, Sarbanes Oxley, ISO 27001 and all others; Risk Management Assessments associated with ISO 27005, NIST Special Publications and all others; and Governance and Policy Development to describe a few but not all possible use cases.

Excel has big limits in space, accessibility, presentation, sustainability and formatting making it a poor choice for assessment and audit work. ITAM has flipped that paradigm upside-down with Big Data management, collaborative SaaS access, theme driven aesthetics, long term analytics and trending functionality, intelligent logic and notifications and so much more.

Our GRC solutions break industry paradigms that have plagued both client organizations and service providers alike. We’d like to show you how we have taken our real-world expertise and created GRC solutions that are being touted as game-changing technology. Call Continuum GRC software solutions today at 1-888-896-7580 and schedule a demonstration.

Simply put, Excel is so old-school and ITAM is so cool-school!

Visit ContinuumGRC.com to get more information about the IT Audit Machine.

Lazarus Alliance Comments on Potential Hard Rock Cyber Security Breach

An actual cyber security breach would put Hard Rock Hotel and Casino at the front of the corporate wreckage A-List and be hard hitting on both the business and careers.

The past twelve (12) months have produced cyber security breaches at Sony, Target, Neiman Marcus, Michaels, Affinity Gaming, P.F. Chang’s, Albertson’s and SuperValu, Home Depot, JP Morgan Chase, Staples and the list goes on. News that the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino may be joining the roster was reported by CNBC on May 4th 2015.

Prevent Security Breaches with Lazarus Alliance SSAE 16 Assessment Service

For the first time in history CEOs are losing their jobs because of data breaches. Scrutiny of corporate leadership’s management of cyber security preparedness and incident response will undoubtedly continue to increase in the form of litigation and regulatory action after a major incident. The impact an actual cyber security breach would have on Hard Rock remains to be seen.

The escalating prevalence of widely publicized cyber security breaches has lit the fires for change in the attitudes of business leaders and consumers when it comes to cyber security. Gone are the days when board members and the C-suite ignore the drastic business impact a cyber security breach has on a company.

Within this firestorm, consumers are adding fuel by demanding more transparency, accountability and rapid remediation from businesses after a data breach occurs. The result is that cyber security is one of the highest priorities facing businesses and regulators. All of these high-profile security breaches were avoidable through the diligent application of proactive cyber security assessment, audits and strategy.

Michael Peters, CEO of Lazarus Alliance said “It is undeniable that prevention is the better alternative to incident response. A company can be either proactive or reactive to cyber security and only one approach will keep a company off the breach reports!”

Despite overwhelming evidence, businesses will increase focus more on cyber security breach controls against external hackers and cyber criminals this year, many more will miss the importance of protecting against insider and trusted partner threats. Employees and trusted Third-Parties negligence will continue to be the leading cause of cyber security breach incidents for the foreseeable future.

Between human error and trusted insiders with malicious intent, history has shown that the majority of cyber security breaches originate inside the company’s technological and physical walls. Employees and negligence are the leading cause of cyber security incidents but remain the least reported issue.

The Proactive Cyber Security™ services at Lazarus Alliance is years ahead of this issue by offering IT Audit & Compliance, IT Risk Management and IT Governance & Policy solutions to companies that would rather proactively prevent data breaches than be in the news and in the next industry data breach report. These services include proactive SSAE 16 internal audit services.

Lazarus Alliance assessors have a deep wellspring of cyber security, regulatory and assessment experience to draw from. Continuing to shape the industry with breakthrough proprietary technology such as the IT Audit Machine (ITAM), the Policy Machine and Proactive Cyber Security™ methodology all of which exceed baseline requirements providing superior results to our clients.

Learn more about Lazarus Alliance and why Lazarus Alliance is Proactive Cyber Security™