Cybersecurity risk and compliance

To satisfy regulatory and contractual requirements, organizations need to prove their compliance against various cybersecurity frameworks. Organizations need to have a full understanding of these requirements through partnerships with the business, legal/compliance and procurement and align their programs to account for these needs.

Whether it’s pre-certification preparation or the actual attestation, our team is equipped to help provide support in this process. Our certifications include:

• Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) for PCI DSS
• Authorized HITRUST External Assessor
• Third Party Assessor Organization (3PAO) for FEDRAMP and CMMC
• Registered Provider Organization (RPO) for CMMC
• Certified Lead Auditor for ISO 27001

Achieving compliance when faced with complex cybersecurity regulatory requirements can be an overwhelming process. Compliance is not optional and regulatory requirements may vary based on their business type (such as public vs. private), the type of data the organization stores, the regions in which they do business, the sector of customers they serve, the industry they represent and the third-party vendors they work with. To become adaptive, CISOs need to understand the compliance needs of the business both today and in the future, then design a program that considers those requirements while reducing complexity and burdens on the enterprise.

We help clients such as advisors, assessors, implementors and operators of compliance programs across a variety of regulatory and compliance frameworks such as HIPAA/PHIPPA, HITECH, FISMA, NIST, NERC CIP, Canadian federal and provincial privacy laws, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Safe Harbor Principles, and third-party risk management activities, such as BITS and Standardized Information Gathering (SIG).

Once compliance requirements are met, organizations should implement a program that ensures compliance maintenance going forward. As the business evolves and requirements change, the organization needs to share responsibility of compliance as a business-as-usual concept. A leading-edge program takes advantage of automation, dashboarding and escalation of alerting to implement Three-Lines-of-Defense engagement within the organization.

Our experienced team specializes in compliance and technology to enable your continuous compliance evaluation and help identify and remediate compliance gaps as they happen.

Cybersecurity risk management is a core component of the overall cybersecurity function within an organization. It’s how organizations identify, categorize and determine strategies for managing the risks the organization faces. A strong security program needs to incorporate clearly defined practices for risk identification/assessment, treatment and mitigation, and align to an enterprise framework which incorporates privacy. It should also include educating the business to enable them to make effective risk decisions through a partnership with security, giving the security team an opportunity to be involved earlier in the decision-making process.

Our team will assist you with the development and implementation of a security program that enables strong collaboration between the business and cybersecurity. We’re experienced with risk frameworks such as NIST 800-37 and ISO and will customize a solution to fit your organization’s needs.

Many businesses underestimate the amount of personal or consumer data they hold as well as the various regulations required for storing this data. Companies now face significant penalties—even when no data breach has occurred—due to complex and evolving global data privacy regulations. Many organizations are not fully compliant with data privacy laws such as evolving Canadian federal and provincial laws to protect consumer information or international regulations (GDPR, LGPD, PIPEDA) and may not realize the implications.

From data discovery to technical safeguard design and policy development, our team of privacy professionals will help your organization design a program to proactively comply with requirements. An effective data privacy program can also work in your favour as a competitive differentiator.

Many middle market businesses underestimate the amount of personal or consumer data they may hold, and the various regulations required of them to store this data. Companies are now facing significant penalties—even when no data breach has occurred—due to complex and evolving global data privacy regulations. RSM has an in-depth understanding of these regulations and will help you develop a program to proactively comply with constantly evolving data laws. Data privacy regulations we can advise you on include GDPR, CCPA, LGPD and PIPEDA.

Our data privacy-focused professionals can also provide guidance on data audit and discovery, policy governance review or development, technical safeguard assessments, incident response plan development and advisory services. Additionally, we offer an extensive privacy gap assessment service to benchmark your organization against applicable laws and reduce your risk of facing penalties for noncompliance.

Policies and procedures serve as the foundation of your cybersecurity program. These policies should be mapped to a common framework that considers internal and industry-related regulatory/standards requirements and consider the organization’s risk structure. CISOs should look to design and implement policies that are easily understood by the non-technical audiences that will be responsible for following and implementing them and align with the actual capabilities of the organization.

Our specialists will structure your cybersecurity policies and procedures to align with the risks and regulations associated with your specific industry and your internal controls framework. We’ll work with you to create policies that are easily understood by a non-technical audience. We’ll create procedures aligned to your policies and actual capabilities—not just aspirational goals—and we’ll ensure your processes continuously mature with your organizational growth.

Over the last several years, third-party cyber incidents have increased in frequency and impact on organizations from a reputational, financial and operational perspective. As a result, the need to have a full understanding of the risk presented by third parties—including service providers, affiliates and partners—has never been more important. CISOs need to engage with the business, contracting and procurement to define security and privacy contractual terms based on risk. Then they must follow those requirements through to identify and prioritize third parties for review and tracking, align with acceptable risk tolerance and monitor ongoing third-party activities. Our team will work with you through design, implementation and operation of your third-party risk program to create a simplistic approach.