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Ezentria ComplyWise Helps Small and Midsize Businesses Achieve and Maintain Information Security Compliance
Proven 14-Step Process Enables Companies with Limited Internal Information Security Resources to Compete for New Business
Small and midsize organizations throughout the United States play an integral part in larger commercial and government supply chains. Whether they are manufacturing a component, delivering a service, or processing data, contracts in today’s cyber-sensitive world have requirements for information security and data privacy that can disqualify many small businesses.
To compete and win new business, smaller organizations need to tighten [and document] their policies, procedures and controls to align with the required security and privacy frameworks. The standards identified in the contract are typically dictated by the larger organization. Some requirements are organization-specific (i.e. NYDFS 23 NYCRR 500, Microsoft SSPA, California’s CCPA), others are industry-specific (i.e. HIPAA, PCI DSS, FISMA), but most find their roots in international or national standards (i.e. ISO 27001, NIST, SOC 2, GDPR).
Most small and midsize businesses have an IT department or a managed service provider (MSP) handling their IT needs. Some have added managed security service providers (MSSP) to help with firewalls, endpoint detection and SIEM logs. And more recently, midsize companies have introduced managed detection and response (MDR) providers. But few have internal compliance and vendor risk management teams that make sure all those providers are unified, complying with supplier and customer contracts, and reducing the organization’s risk. That is where Ezentria ComplyWise comes in.
Ezentria ComplyWise is a proven process for achieving and maintaining compliance certifications and attestations. Using the process, the Ezentria team will help you prepare for your third-party audits—part of the process even includes helping you find an appropriate [and small business-friendly] auditor. A key component of the process is the ComplyWise cloud-based portal. Without a portal, compliance teams juggle a plethora of spreadsheets hoping to track and quickly find the information the auditor will require. While this method may work for one audit, it doesn’t scale when multiple frameworks or third-party audits share similar requirements.
For example, if an organization is working on obtaining a SOC 2 attestation for Client ABC but knows there is a new contract coming from Supplier XYZ that requires ISO 27001, the ComplyWise Portal can map the additional requirements for the second contract, align existing controls with the new framework, and simplify the effort required to achieve the second certification. Since the small business is usually trying to comply with the larger organization’s requirements, flexible real-time reporting, holistic program visibility, and dashboard-based compliance management allow them to react quickly.
“In today’s environment, companies are having to prove that they’re handling shared information properly and that their systems are secure.”, said Dave Christiansen, Managing Director of Ezentria. “Most small businesses simply don’t have enough internal resources to run their day-to-day IT operations and project manage an extensive compliance initiative. So, we’ve packaged the policies, procedures, tools, dashboards, and experts they’ll need into ComplyWise.”
Once an audit is complete, the work is not over. The small business needs to continually refine their security efforts and respond to supplier and client requests for compliance documentation. Ezentria offers additional services: Virtual CISO, Vendor Risk Management, Vulnerability Assessments, and Penetration Testing to continually improve, manage, and measure the maturity of a client’s compliance program.
To learn more about Ezentria ComplyWise, visit https://complywise.ezentria.com.
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