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Completing IT Risk Assessments

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  In the world of Compliance, risk assessments are the foundation of a protected business. Knowing what risks are out there, how to mitigate them, and what your risk appetite is, will all help to ensure vulnerabilities and shortfalls can be addressed and managed properly. Just like with compliance, IT risk assessments are especially important because the risk landscape is constantly evolving, making it harder to keep up with the changes in risk to your business. Risk assessments can also help to keep costs under control and make audits more efficient. The following steps will assist your business in undertaking a quality IT risk assessment. Identify all possible  vulnerabilities : Make time to document all the possible vulnerabilities that could pose a risk to your business. Include ransomware, DDoS attacks, phishing campaigns, possible routes into your networks and which departments or personnel are more vulnerable than others. Also note any gaps in your current security po...

How to Find Your AML Compliance Gaps

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  As an avid reader, my favorite genre is mystery.  A good mystery writer will drop a clue now and then, just enough to keep me guessing and occasionally I may be able to figure out who did the deed once I reach The End. However, as much as I love a good mystery, a compliance manual should not read like one.  And yet, sadly, so many do.  Too many require the reader to hunt for the clues to a company’s anti-money laundering (AML) processes and policies and approach to risk analysis.

Anti Money Laundering Compliance System

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  SILO is Designed to Make AML Compliance Simpler, Faster, and More Comprehensive.  If you’re constantly updating spreadsheets to manage your Anti-Money Laundering customer due diligence obligations, SILO Compliance System is for you. AML compliance is too important to be managed on a spreadsheet or through a “module” bolted on as an afterthought to an accounting or document management system.

After Action Reviews for Cyber-Attacks

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  After countless man hours and additional funding put in place to protect your business from cyber-attacks , there will always be residual risk of a breach. If a breach still happens after all the hard work you and your team put in, it would be easy to resign yourself to the fact that it was all for nothing. What you must focus on though is that all that hard work made it much more difficult for that breach to occur. A hacker may spend days, weeks or months attempting to breach a network, and they only have to be lucky once to call their operation a success. If they manage to do so, the best thing you and your team can do is ensure you learn from it. After every operation in the military, both training and real-world, comes an After Action Review (AAR), and you should conduct one of your own to learn as much as you can about any cyber incident. An AAR has several parts which are key to ensuring you learn as much as possible about the incident: What was supposed to happen?...

Recovering From A Breach

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  Cybersecurity article series: Cybersecurity risk analysis Staff training Detecting a breach and immediate action Recovering from a breach Even after going through months and years of training your team to prevent and detect data breaches, it is of course still possible that your business gets added to the ever-growing list of victims of a hack. Remember that a criminal only has to be lucky once in order to gain access to your data. If your business has been proactive in keeping your devices and networks safe and in preparing for a possible breach, you’ll have the upper hand legally and ethically if one does occur. Once it has been confirmed that systems, networks or data have been compromised, there are a few specific actions that will help you along the road to recovery.

Recovering from a breach

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  Cybersecurity article series: Cybersecurity risk analysis Staff training Detecting a breach and immediate action Recovering from a breach Even after going through months and years of training your team to prevent and detect data breaches, it is of course still possible that your business gets added to the ever-growing list of victims of a hack. Remember that a criminal only has to be lucky once in order to gain access to your data. If your business has been proactive in keeping your devices and networks safe and in preparing for a possible breach, you’ll have the upper hand legally and ethically if one does occur. Once it has been confirmed that systems, networks or data have been compromised, there are a few specific actions that will help you along the road to recovering. Secure your systems from further intrusion – this should have been done when the initial breach was detected but it’s a good idea to make sure that no further data loss can occur. The only thing worse than a ...