Documentation

As businesses grow, both in size and organizational complexity, so should the scope of their privacy and security efforts. This is an important lesson which many companies have had to unfortunately learn the hard way. But who among us can honestly blame them? The cybersecurity landscape can be VERY complicated. Penetration testing, data encryption, password management, user access controls, firewalls, domain administration, cloud servers, international data and privacy laws; these are just a fraction of things you have to consider when you start looking at your security posture. Heck, these days even your printer could be considered a cybersecurity risk!

So where do you start? You know you have to do something, but finding a place to start in such a vast and overwhelming space can be a barrier in and of itself. More often than not, simply understanding what you have that is at risk, and the factors that are putting you at risk, are the best first steps to put your company on the right path. Luckily the industry has a solution for this very scenario. Enter the cybersecurity risk assessment.

A risk assessment is a fantastic tool that takes a broad, contextual look into the privacy and security of your business, which can be simplified into three major objectives. The first objective is identifying information assets that could be targets of, or affected by a security breach. By understanding what assets are at risk to begin with, you can more easily focus on plans and important objectives for protecting them. This can also help you understand more about your privacy and security needs in general. Do you really need that expensive IPS your IT manager asked for? Should you be looking at ISO 270001 certification? Risk assessments can help answer those questions for you.

After identifying your assets, the second objective is identifying the risks to, or associated with, those assets. In other words, what risks do those assets come with, and what aspects of your company infrastructure could be putting those assets at risk. This can range from very technical things like firewall misconfigurations, or vulnerable software running on company servers, to less technical things like unlocked doors, and misplaced camera systems. This is the part of the assessment where you can start to see the work that needs to be done, and you can start prioritizing findings by criticality. This will tell you what findings are important and must be remedied immediately, or what might be considered minor and worth accepting if there are more important gaps to remedy first.

Once you understand your risks, the last major objective is of course, remediation. Starting with the most critical findings, a risk assessment will assign responsibility for these risks within the organization, as well as goals and guidance for mitigating them. Sometimes referred to as a ‘Treatment Plan’, having clear and concise documentation of the issues at hand drastically reduces the time it can take to alleviate them. Assigning responsibility for these risks also creates a sense of ownership and accountability within the organization to ensure these are not only fixed quickly, but are maintained over time. 

While risk assessments are phenomenal for newer businesses just getting started on building their cybersecurity infrastructure, they are also incredibly important for established security teams as well. Regular risk assessments allow your company to track progress, quantify improvements made, and continue to identify new opportunities for improvement as you change and grow. This ensures that as new clients join, or new services are offered, you can maintain a comfortable footing within your risk management structure, as well as a potential competitive advantage over others in your space. As the data privacy and security requirements for the biggest companies in the world continues to grow, due diligence and proactive tactics that show your organization is committed to handling their data responsibly and securely can make all the difference when they are deciding who gets that next big contract.

Let CyberData Pros conduct a Risk Assessment for your business and help identify any data privacy/security gaps that may exist. Contact us now for a free consultation and to learn more about our services.

Documenting important processes for your business and employees is critical to the overall success of the business. This is no different than privacy and security documentation for your business. Having the proper documentation for your business will help with client/vendor questionnaires, insurance for your business, and knowing how secure data is.

There are multiple pieces of data privacy and security documentation that your business needs. Documentation does differ from industry to industry, but many of the critical documents are universal across the board. I’ve outlined some of these critical documents below:

IT Security Policy

Document that lays out the internal security policies of how the business uses, stores, and processes data. May include other policies such as Clean Desk, Remote Working, Responsible Parties, etc.

Disaster Recovery Plan

Set of policies and procedures on how to enable the recovery of vital infrastructure and systems following a disaster. The important portion of this document should outline critical processes and how long each process can be down in order for your business to recover.

Business Continuity Plan

Documented plan and process of creating systems of prevention and recovery to deal with potential threats to a company. In addition to prevention, the goal is to enable ongoing operations during the execution of disaster recovery.

Data Classification Policy

Policy document to classify different types of data into separate categories in order to understand “sensitivity”. These classifications could include levels such as Public, Sensitive, Private, Top Secret, etc.

Incident Response Plan

A planned set of instructions to help IT detect, respond to, and recover from data privacy or security incidents. These types of plans address issues like cybercrime, data loss, and service outages.

Risk Management Policy

Policy document that aims to provide guidance regarding the management of risk to support the achievement of corporate objectives.

Keeping your documentation current is essential so that critical pieces of the business are known to all. The worst thing that can happen is an employee walks out the door and nothing is documented. Consider this a major issue to the data privacy and security documentation.

If you feel you don’t have the proper documentation or where to start, contact CyberData Pros and we can help. It is not only important to have the proper documentation for the business, but to also keep it updated. Let us help put together a plan and carry out it out to keep your business in full compliance.

It happens all the time. A client or vendor sends over a security questionnaire and you don’t know where to start. How do you fill this out? What if I make a mistake? What if I can’t answer their questions? These are just a few questions that may come to mind. In today’s world of strict compliance, these security questionnaires are becoming the norm. Being prepared and having answers is critical to ongoing business. Let’s break these down and how to approach them.

A typical security questionnaire is going to cover areas of your business that range from documentation of disaster recovery to physical security mechanisms in your business. On average, these questionnaires can be “hundreds” of questions long! Yes, you read that right and many of these require answers within a few weeks.

Start with the privacy and security documentation that you have written and know that you may need to provide some of this. We recently wrote a blog about the kinds of documentation to have and why is it important. Creating a document and data bank of answers will help you get through these questionnaires faster in the long run.

Understand the “technical” data privacy and security areas of your organization. You may have a department at your company that can help fill out the technical questions. This is great, but make sure you understand the answers in case there is any need for justification.

If this all sounds daunting and you don’t have time for it, let CyberData Pros assist you with these questionnaires. We have over 20 years of filling these out for our clients and we will help you better understand the details. Contact CyberData Pros now to see how we can help your business with this and many other data privacy and security solutions.