Businesses are required to perform a number of annual audits and assessments, a number that is increasing at a dramatic rate. The information security requirements of these multiple audits are increasing as well, both in number and complexity. Such pressures incur costs as well, in terms of investments in the necessary technology, processes, and resources needed to comply with and support multiple audits. CISSP.com Security Consulting helps companies streamline their information security and compliance efforts by reducing duplication of effort across multiple audits and by ensuring that companies properly prepare and organize documentation for quick and efficient compliance auditing. The consulting team leverages industry-leading experience and expertise and acts as a trusted advisor to build programs and processes specifically geared toward facilitating compliance with regulatory and partner requirements and to provide objective advice on security processes and technology. Using Cissp.com Consulting services to optimize information security services and compliance, clients can minimize risk, focus on core business goals, and confidently pursue new business opportunities.

Addressing today's information security challanges:

To resolve technology and security challanges and to achieve compliance with multiple regulations in today's complex environments, and then to be able to verify compliance to the relevant parties, companies must take the following measures:

• Implement carefully devised technology and process controls (e.g., personnel controls, physical and logical access controls, and legal and contractual controls). These controls should be efficient, clear-cut, and easily duplicated, and they must be immediately transferred when a new user, technology, or information is added. As much as possible, these controls should be automated.

• Document and organize compliance efforts to demonstrate compliance details to auditors. This includes implementing consistent, repeatable systems for quantifying, tracking, analyzing, demonstrating, and reporting on compliance.
• Enable auditors and assessors to validate documentation (audit servicing). This includes maintaining an audit data repository and enabling validation. First and foremost, companies must be able to collect and compile assessment data in a format that can be extracted easily and shared efficiently and confidentially. Validation may involve spot-auditing application usage, reviewing information retention practices, examining user-authorization records, and inspecting technical configurations.
• Ideally, the preceding measures should be delivered via a flexible, low-impact solution that maps to the unique technical and business requirements of each internal organization, while allowing for the flexibility needed to address future regulation and growth. Realistically, though, few companies have adequate internal resources to create a solution structure that addresses every aspect of compliance and documentation—especially when facing multiple regulations and disparate technologies, and when they are driven by diverse business needs.

Using Consultants Strategically:

Organizations choose different resources for different aspects of security projects, for a variety of reasons. Personnel and time constraints, cost, and the magnitude of the project or compliance effort all factor into the delivery of security solutions. In the arena of security advisory services, however, outside consultants render unique advantages that in-house solutions cannot provide. By using consulting services strategically, companies can optimize the effectiveness, efficiency, and scalability of their information security solutions. Qualified information-security consultants from CISSP.com provide the following advantages:

• Third-party objectivity – To comply with internal, partner, and industry-specific regulations, companies may need the third-party non-repudiation and experienced capabilities that only an external, unbiased professional can provide.

• Staffing and skill set – While existing security staff may lack the time, experience, or insight to tackle additional security projects, security consultants can be more objective and more focused. They encounter a broad range of security issues and environments in their daily work, giving them experience that would be difficult to accumulate working within a single enterprise. In addition, they are up-to-date on— and conversant in—the myriad of government and industry compliance and security requirements.
• Trust – The involvement of a trust security advisor with a proven track record and global name recognition can help establish trust between a business and external users who may not be well-acquainted with (or confident of ) the company and its compliance and auditing capabilities.
• Intelligence – Security consultants and managed service providers tend to have faster, more expansive access to information about network vulnerabilities, impending attacks, and solutions. This information allows them to quickly address or respond to problems that could affect security and compliance.

CISSP.com security consulting and advisory service is different:

When researching and planning a security project or a compliance effort, enterprises must objectively weigh their own capabilities against the advantages of engaging information security consultants. If their evaluation indicates the need for security consultants, the next step is choosing the right consultant for the job. When selecting a security advisor to deliver compliance and security solutions, companies should carefully consider the following criteria:

• Technology Security and Regulatory Expertise: Compliance and security consultants should have a firm grasp of every regulation, policy, or standard for which compliance is sought. They should thoroughly understand not only the intricacies of the regulation itself, but also the related methodologies, processes, and technologies available to implement, test, and demonstrate security compliance. We are able to recognize and apply compensating controls that meet the spirit, if not the letter, of the regulation or standard. And, we have experience to anticipate—and create solutions that accommodate—the imposition of additional, related regulations.

• Vendor Neutrality: To contain costs, ensure proper execution, and build best-of-breed solutions, the consultant’s processes and technology should work easily with the company’s existing infrastructure and third-party products. This includes not only easy integration of tools and technology with existing software and hardware. It also extends to working with the existing corporate culture and understanding the security limitations and requirements of the enterprise’s core business. To ensure this will happen, we are consultants who take a vendor-neutral approach to the technologies they recommend.
• Experience of the Delivery Team: Given the significant risk associated with improper handling of security and compliance issues, it is imperative that the team delivering security and compliance solutions has wide-ranging, deep expertise in not only information security, but also security-related regulations and standards. In addition, consultants should have real-world experience tailoring compliance solutions for geographically dispersed, functionally diverse organizations within the company; unifying disparate policies and processes across the enterprise; and developing repeatable methodologies for tracking, analyzing, and reporting compliance data. All our consultants are Certified Information Systems Security Professionals (CISSPs) and/or Certified Information Systems Auditors (CISAs) and/or Certified Information Systems Managers (CISMs). They receive continuing education, have an in-depth understanding of the concepts of IT defense, and able to apply their skills appropriately for each specific task.

As a trusted provider of information-security consulting and advisory services, CISSP.com Consulting and advisory services leverages its security and regulatory knowledge, vendor neutrality and subject matter expertise to deliver strategic consulting services that optimize security and compliance solutions. CISSP.com consultants help optimize the structure of a company’s security, compliance and auditing efforts by analyzing each requirement and then objectively matching it to potential solutions. CISSP.com security professionals develop and implement sound, practical programs that take into account the business requirements, limitations, and culture of real-world businesses.