In today’s constantly evolving cybersecurity threat landscape, you have to do everything possible and then some to protect your critical data assets. Performing a vulnerability assessment and implementing a vulnerability management program can help your organization effectively deal with cybersecurity vulnerabilities. However, it’s important to understand the difference between vulnerability assessment and vulnerability management.

COVID-19 has us reeling from health, social, and economic shocks, but this isn’t our first global crisis. It is, however, the first in which cybercrime plays a starring role. The world has faced several pandemics in the past 100 years—several influenza pandemics including swine flu (H1N1) and Avian, or bird, flu, and HIV/AIDS—as well as economic depression and a number of recessions.

An FCPA compliance program checklist outlines the things an American company needs to check when it wants to do business in a foreign country to ensure it follows the guidelines of the U.S Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) of 1977. The FCPA is a federal law that aims to prevent all U.S. companies and their officers, directors, employees, and agents from making corrupt payments to foreign government officials to retain or obtain business.

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication (SP) 800-37 revision 2 is a Risk Management Framework for Information Systems and Organizations: A System Lifecycle Approach for Security and Privacy. NIST SP 800-37 rev 2 was published in December of 2018 and describes the Risk Management Framework (RMF) and guidelines on how to apply RMF to information systems.

Third-party vendor data breaches are becoming an epidemic for organizations that themselves have solid information security programs. The Ponemon Institute has proven year over year in its survey that the cost of third-party data breaches increases with each survey. Many struggle with how exactly to hold third-party vendors accountable and enforce the same rigid standards and controls that they consume internally. The big question is: how do organizations prevent third-party vendor data breaches?

If the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has caused your enterprise to make a sudden, rapid switch from an on-premises-centered business model to a diverse, dispersed network of ad-hoc home offices, you may have let security and privacy measures slide a bit.

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) represents an information security standard designed for organizations that store, process, or transmit credit cards and are exposed to cardholder data. The card brands themselves have advocated for the PCI standard which is administered by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC). Given organizations are interested in compliance, many ask the question “what are the PCI DSS Security Audit Procedures”?

The Factor Analysis of Information Risk (FAIR) framework was developed by Jack Jones. FAIR is a risk management framework championed by the open group that enables organizations to analyze, measure, and understand risk. The FAIR model evaluates factors that contribute to IT risk and how they impact each other while breaking down risk by identifying and defining the risk model. FAIR is most often used to establish probabilities for the frequency and magnitude of data loss.

A vulnerability assessment or vulnerability analysis is the process of identifying the security vulnerabilities in your network, systems, and hardware and taking steps to fix those security vulnerabilities. A vulnerability assessment can provide information that your IT and security teams can use to improve your company’s threat mitigation and prevention processes.

Vulnerability Management is the cornerstone of information security programs. Cybersecurity practitioners leverage vulnerability management programs to identify, classify, prioritize, remediate, and mitigate vulnerabilities most often found in software and networks. Vulnerability assessments, while not mutually exclusive with vulnerability management, are generally part of a vulnerability management program in order to identify, quantify, and prioritize vulnerabilities in a system.

A major problem with your information technology (IT) systems can totally disrupt your business, costing you time and money while you wait for repairs. An IT audit checklist helps ensure that your IT department has the necessary tools to secure your network and avoid these expensive repairs.