Your Company needs Information Security Monitoring and Integrated GRC

Did you know :

• Approximately 500 million records containing personal identifying information of United States residents stored in government and corporate databases was either lost or stolen in the last 5 years?
• Various other corporations lost US$1 Trillion worldwide as a result of data loss, accidental or malicious?
• Costs from the largest computer data breach in corporate history at TJX, in which more than 94 million customer Credit and Debit card numbers were stolen was estimated at US$ 256 million?
• In 2009, Gartner analysts estimated that the cost of sensitive data break will increase 20 percent per year?

These are not merely statistics but a warning that companies need to take a serious note of the kind of cyber security threats and business compliance risks that are out there for them.

So you may feel that your company is safe…so here’s some number crunching for you to think again!

Security breaches affected the following industries

• The retail industry (35%)
• Technology firms (20%)
• Banking and financial industry (20%)
• Medical industry (15%)
• Defense industry (10%)

Overall, only 5% of the companies resorted to security monitoring! The majority (55%) had absolutely no mechanisms for monitoring and the rest 40% conveniently outsourced the IT security monitoring functions to managed services providers. So your company may have put in place certain strategies in the form of policies, guidelines, firewalls and virus scanners, which you deem adequate enough to deal with hackers. But are they truly the protective shield your company needs?

Keep your company cyber-threat free

Verizon Business for instance reported 90 confirmed breaches within their 2008 caseload encompassing an astounding 285 million compromised records. And a thorough investigation proved that ‘significant errors’ standing at 67% was the main cause of the security breach! So the question that’s begging to be answered right now…is whether your company implemented a proper Governance, Risk and Compliance system? If not, then your company is at its maximum risk level. The most workable solution for any company in such a volatile and unsafe environment is to integrate and automate GRC combining compliance workflow with control assessment automation and security monitoring.

But keep in mind, IT-GRC does not stop threats; it only helps companies manage “the whole process” of IT security, compliance, and risk management through policy guidelines and implementation. So, compliance with a regulatory framework is a big  step which could bring down the risk significantly, since these regulations are the collective wisdom of specialists in the society. Thus there is a considerable reduction in risk exposure by simply the best practices prevalent in the industry.

Next generation GRC solutions

A holistic approach is to look at business risks from 2 different perspectives, from the compliance management policy implementation point of view as well as measuring the reality on the ground through information security monitoring. what the next generation enterprise solution needs to offer -one which will cover all aspects of security and compliance management, An ideal next generation solution would provide

• integrated compliance management and security monitoring
• multiple out of the box global regulations support
• automated control assessment
• secure end-point devices to enable massive storage of sensitive and regulated data
• security solutions for monitoring the network traffic
• ability to address business problems through detection of advanced threats
• scale up to global enterprises and down to small and medium businesses
• capable to integrate multiple solutions
• deliver compelling and value to the organization and also be affordable

Gain with SecureGRC: Integrated GRC and Security Monitoring

With your company’s integrated GRC  and security efforts you will notice that it actually drives real value for your company, especially in optimizing risk and compliance coverage and the underlying cost structure. All you need to do is ensure that your company’s integrated GRC should understand and manage the nature of risks for your specific industry with security monitoring.

SecureGRC from eGestalt Technologies Inc. unifies Information security monitoring and IT Compliance management. For more details please visit: http://www.egestalt.com/securegrctm.html