Security Framework

A security framework assessment should never be treated as a task where you simply “check the box” every year. As cybercrime, cyber risk, and customer requirements increase, together with the fines and the potential long-term reputational damage that can be done by a breach of your enterprise—or worse, the theft of your confidential or regulated data (PII/ePHI)—you need to be confident you are implementing the right security controls for your needs.

RITC Cybersecurity’s strategy and tactics are based on the belief that if you are secure, you will be compliant; if you only focus on compliance, you may not be secure. This philosophy and the hard lessons learned over time are shared with your team throughout the security framework implementation and gap analysis, resulting in your team gaining a deeper understanding of how to implement security controls designed to protect your company, users, and data.

Whether you are looking to strengthen cybersecurity measures, reduce risk, or implement a security framework for the first time—such as NIST, CIS, CMMC, or ISO—RITC Cybersecurity’s team will provide your team with guidance on implementing the framework and will help you define the appropriate controls for your environment. RITC Cybersecurity will assess the gaps in your IT environment’s controls, be they administrative, technical, or procedural, and help you design controls to secure your environment and mitigate risk. After an initial assessment, we will build a roadmap for framework alignment, complete with quarterly, monthly, and annual tasks to ensure continued compliance.

Once a framework is implemented, you will be able to establish a cybersecurity baseline for future assessments. Implementing a cybersecurity framework like NIST, CIS, or ISO will give you a guide for creating and maintaining a proactive cybersecurity program and controls for your organization. Our goal is to maximize the capabilities of the technologies and team you already own to minimize cost, time, and downtime.

RITC Specializes in the Following Security Frameworks:

        •       CIS v7 and 8
        •       NIST CSF
        •       NIST SP 800-171, NIST 800-53, and CMMC 2.0
        •       ISO 27001

RITC practices a time-tested approach to coach and enable your team for the future, well beyond the completion of your initial security framework assessment. With the information collected during our initial assessment, not only will we empower your team for the future, but we will also define a roadmap to remediate your gaps, design security controls, and operationalize future evidence gathering for audit or assessment requirements, enabling you to improve your enterprise’s cybersecurity posture and eliminate risk.

Our team of industry experts develops and matures strong cybersecurity programs aligned to NIST, CMMC, CIS, or ISO by creating a risk-based cybersecurity approach that leverages our experience and principles from being CRISC-certified professionals by ISACA, allowing organizations to grow with purpose and peace of mind.

Our team utilizes the technologies and personnel you already have and won’t recommend new technologies unless requested. In short, we aren’t going to try to sell you the latest and greatest tool that claims to solve all your cybersecurity problems.

RITC Cybersecurity helps by providing you with a roadmap broken down into activities by month and quarter, which will help you maintain a strong security posture and eliminate risk. When you follow the roadmap and engage with RITC Cybersecurity, you will be ready for the challenges presented by today’s complicated cybersecurity landscape. These requirements often seem like sales killers, but if you are prepared, they can be turned into assets to help you win deals and grow your company.

A Security Framework Assessment typically generates the following deliverables:

        •       Executive summary of your cybersecurity posture based on our analysis
        •       Detailed reporting of the status of your current security posture and controls
        •       RITC will provide a Letter of Attestation (LOA) for use with your current clients and prospects
        •       RITC will define a plan and provide recommendations custom-tailored to your needs

CMMC

Meeting CMMC audit requirement’s demands time, planning, and effort from every department in your organization. Before starting a CMMC audit organizations need to take the time to understanding their current cybersecurity posture. Knowing your cybersecurity posture involves identifying potential vulnerabilities, risks, and areas that need improvement. 

You need to engage a trusted third party to perform cybersecurity risk assessments, self-assessment questionnaires, and gap analyses to properly prepare for a CMMC audit. RITC Cybersecurity will help you understand your current cybersecurity posture and define a roadmap for aligning with the CMMC audit requirements. This may involve implementing technical controls, develop and define your cybersecurity policies, as well as begin comprehensive security awareness training.

Risk Management

Risk Management:

The first step in improving your enterprise’s cybersecurity position is a cyber risk assessment against a cybersecurity framework like NIST, CIS, ISO, or a compliance framework like HIPAA, SOC 2 Type 1 or 2, or SEC/FINRA.

The goal of enterprise IT risk management is to identify risk by:

        •       Assessing your environment
        •       Planning to address your future
        •       Analyzing your technology strengths and weaknesses
        •       Identifying missing processes
        •       Understanding employee or contractor-related risks
        •       Documenting and improving existing processes and governance

Consistently identifying technology, process, and human-related risks is critical for any business’s growth and even survival. Assessment and testing activities don’t stop at locating risk; they provide a clear roadmap for how to eliminate, remediate, share, or even when to accept risk.

Assessments of cyber risk management controls for technical, administrative, and procedural risks can be a time-consuming task and take away from the KTLO responsibilities of your already lean IT team. RITC provides services that will empower you to identify risk and develop a plan to harden your enterprise’s security posture.

A risk assessment will provide a baseline for risk-based, prioritized, and informed decision-making.

Disaster Recovery

Your Disaster Recovery (DR) plan, or Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plan (DRBCP), is only effective when it is continuously reviewed and tested. An effective Disaster Recovery Plan requires, at a minimum, an annual review, and updates should occur every time there are major changes in infrastructure. There should also be an annual walk-through of the plan by the critical staff and their backups so they are familiar with the plan should an emergency occur that requires its implementation.

RITC’s team will help you test your existing process, recommend updates as needed, and help you develop a plan for the restoration of your infrastructure. RITC will guide your team in developing procedures for not only high-impact systems that need to be recovered within hours, but also in identifying the order in which systems should be restored to ensure the most efficient recovery and minimize service outage.

Incident Response

Just like a Disaster Recovery (DR) plan, an Incident Response (IR) plan needs to be developed and tested. However, unlike a Disaster Recovery plan, an Incident Response plan should be tested quarterly. The goal of your IR plan should be to define your network security monitoring process and intrusion detection/prevention procedures when responding to computer security events. Additionally, your Incident Response Plan should be used to ensure cybersecurity-related incidents are identified, responded to, and recovered from as rapidly and safely as possible. The Incident Response plan needs to minimize the duration of enterprise outage, reduce financial and reputational loss, and document the resolution to help protect against future incidents.

By acting quickly to reduce the actual and potential effects of an attack, a strong Incident Response plan will make the difference between a minor and a major incident.

When was the last time your Disaster Recovery and Incident Response plans were reviewed and tested? Have you ever had an experienced third party walk your team through the plan or lead a tabletop exercise? Are you new to your position and trying to evaluate your readiness? There is good news—RITC Cybersecurity can help with our experienced CRISC and CISSP team members!

Change Management

Your Change Management Policy is effective when it is comprehensive, tracked, and, most importantly, followed. RITC Cybersecurity recommends using a holistic, enterprise-wide approach that encompasses all changes, including infrastructure, cloud, client-facing applications, and more.

RITC Cybersecurity defines change as the addition, modification, or removal of anything that could have an impact on client-facing, production, development, and QA environments.

The goal of the Change Management process is to ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for the efficient and prompt implementation of all changes. The Change Management process will minimize the impact of change-related incidents upon service quality, consequently improving the day-to-day operations of your company.

RITC Cybersecurity’s team will work with your team to implement a streamlined approach for planning and managing the orderly introduction of changes across your enterprise.

Expert vCISO 

Cybersecurity requirements and cyber risk management become more difficult to navigate every day. If you don’t have the budget to hire a dedicated CISO, how do you plan and develop a roadmap for the future?

Do you need help fulfilling a specific customer requirement, or gaining critical insights on how to effectively handle threat assessments and analysis, cybersecurity strategy, and best practices?

When you need to take a proactive approach to strengthening your security team, implementing a security framework, identifying gaps in your current compliance requirements (such as HIPAA or PCI), passing a compliance audit (like SOC2), fulfilling customer security requirements, or improving your overall cybersecurity posture, you can engage one of RITC Cybersecurity’s experienced and accredited vCISOs. RITC Cybersecurity’s team will provide you with guidance on how to best enhance your cybersecurity posture, based on years of real-world experience—at a fraction of the price of hiring a full-time CISO.

Our goal is to provide your team with a roadmap for the future, broken down into activities by month and quarter, empowering your team to take the lead in strengthening and maturing your company’s cybersecurity practice and program.

Want help maintaining a strong cybersecurity posture? If so, contact RITC Cybersecurity today.