Conducting an IT Audit: Industry Compliance and Data Protection

Businesses of all sizes are vulnerable to network attacks, which can result in lost data or funds, fraud, identity theft, lawsuits, a disabled system, or corrupted files. Although small and medium-size companies and organizations are particularly vulnerable, all businesses utilizing an electronic information system for recordkeeping or offering credit card transactions need a network strategy that incorporates risk assessment and management and involves regular IT audits. Losing data can harm your business, but effective network security is also part of industry best practices standards, such as FFIEC and Sarbanes-Oxley for finance and HIPAA for health care. These industry standards require a business or organization to develop and implement a network security strategy that includes regular audits for compliance.

Hackers and online criminals continue to revise strategies for breaching network security and obtaining insider information. The recent WikiLeaks incident is a large-scale security breach, but your system can be damaged by far smaller threats. To find these weak points, also called "vulnerabilities," have an IT audit conducted on your system.

An IT audit examines network security from three angles: physical, technical, and personal. Ethical hacking, vulnerability scanning, and social engineering are common tactics used to identify these weak points. Approaching the network perimeter and interior as an outside party, a white hat, or ethical, hacker attempts to break into a system using common to sophisticated tactics.

As a full assessment of your business's security, an IT audit is conducted through penetration tests, personal interviews, vulnerability scans, examining operating system and network settings, and researching historical data, or past security breaches. A certified ethical hacking professional considers the following factors when analyzing your network:

? Company security policies and their implementation

? Passwords

? Presence of access control lists and audit logs

? Reviewing of audit logs

? Industry practices and security settings

? Removal of, updated, and custom-built applications

? Backup systems

? Data encryption tools

? Configuration and code changes

? Previous security incidents

An IT audit culminates in a report, which details all vulnerabilities inside and on the perimeter of a network. In addition to identifying them, the report provides strategies for fixing these weak areas and strengthening the network.

PCI DSS Certification - Is It Mandatory To Perform Third Party PCI Compliance Audit And PCI Scan?

PCI DSS certification stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. PCI Data Security Standard has been established by the top five credit card issuing companies, MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Discover and Japanese Credit Bureau, who took their individual security standards for online transactions and merged them into one, establishing the PCI Data Security Council at the same time. The Council is a self-regulatory body which updates the PCI DSS requirements from time to time, trains companies and issues training certificates for companies who then act as PCI Audit executors, and PCI Qualified Security Assessors QSA.

As the online threats multiply in the direction of where the money is (online), the original 12 rules of PCI DSS compliance has evolved and today, as some affected merchants like to say, the 12 rules have over 200 sub-rules that are difficult to interpret, and correspondingly difficult to fulfill. It likely involves annual reporting by a qualified assessor, QSA, and quarterly scanning of outward-looking internet connections by a ASV, Approved Scanning Vendor. Both of which translate to additional costs to the merchant who must undertake the PCI Data Security Standard certification compliance.

So if you are a merchant processing online or point of sale transactions using credit and debit cards, the question comes up, is it mandatory to perform a PCI compliance audit and a PCI scan through third parties?

We'll point out here the two possible routes for a merchant to avoid costly third party PCI DSS audits and PCI scans and still be PCI compliant. They are: Have fewer than 20,000 payment card transactions in a year, and, Get someone from the company PCI DSS Audit qualified, have them become an ISA, Internal Security Assessor. We will talk about the current PCI DSS 2.0 version.

Have fewer than 20,000 payment card transactions per year

If you are relatively small merchant with fewer than 20,000 transactions in a year, you will be able to fulfill the security requirements by doing an internal security audit and simply fill out a Self-Assessment Questionnaire. There are several types of questionnaires. You can work with your "acquirer", or the bank through which you are processing your payment card payments to determine which questionnaire is right for you and what are the deadlines for submitting them.

Have someone from within your company PCI DSS Audit qualified

On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you are a large merchant, or a large online service organization, and you have more than 20,000 transactions per year, you can avoid hiring a third party PCI DSS Qualified Security Assessor by simply sending one of your IT professionals to one of the PCI DSS standard compliance seminars to become qualified as an Internal Security Assessor, thereby removing the need for external PCI Audits. The PCI data security standard checklist audits can from now on be done in house by an ISA. ISAs must be re-certified every year, and the company can now perform their own security audits and still stay PCI compliant.

For more information on the details of PCI DSS compliance see the PCI Compliance section on the site http://PCIscanning.org.

Self Audits for Quick Compliance Checks

Security and risk management issues are persistent challenges that several organizations are faced with. The existence of disparate architectures and processes have deterred implementation of effective strategies, and projects suffer due to wastage of time and rising costs. Auditing is part of the governance, risk and compliance program and is therefore responsible for ensuring effective IT compliance.

IT auditing is a relatively complex procedure involving multiple stakeholders. In the current scenario organizations are incapable of providing a centralized monitoring system, and this hinders process visibility and control. Therefore, there is a need for an integrated and automated IT compliance framework for audits that can provide complete control over data access, management, analysis and presentation.

Audit management solutions help organizations to streamline their audit processes so that they can provide visibility and control to its stakeholders. These solutions also perform audits of various other frameworks including FISMA, GLBA, HIPAA, PCI compliance to assess the existing compliance status.

Notable Auditing Features of Efficient IT Compliance Software

Tools providing governance, risk and compliance solutions should be designed to organize, direct, document and report internal as well as external audits, thus fulfilling all compliance requirements.

Planning Audits Based on Risks - A well-defined GRC solution has the capability to support IT-related risk-based auditing. It can select IT processes, assets and other related activities to assess IT risks. This IT compliance solution can integrate with third-party tools to collect information on risks and vulnerabilities and provide opportunities for audit departments to plan their strategies for an effective and in-depth audit.
Auditing and Assessment - Auditors can record detailed findings and utilize recommendations produced by GRC tools. Self assessments related to IT controls can be performed with the assurance of consistent and reliable results. Auditors can monitor the audit status and compare it with goals and aims of the business and ensure execution of plans on a timely basis.
Audit Reviews -IT-GRC tools produce results on the basis of auditing surveys conducted, and provide recommendations for review and responsible actions. Its integrated workflow approach can initiate remediation actions on negative results and can also schedule audit follow-ups.
Audit Reports - Compliance software systems can provide comprehensive compilation of IT audit reports, which enable visibility into the process and status monitoring capabilities with easy tracking. Simplified dashboards generate reports based on parameters such as audited units, schedules, calendars and corrective measures.

Compliance management solutions should provide a fully integrated audit automation system. This facilitates easy management of risk assessment, planning, scheduling, reporting, issue tracking, and administrative functions. With automated controls organizations can use customized solutions for conducting self assessments, quality reviews and risk evaluations. IT-GRC tools provide self auditing capabilities and can support all types of audits including internal audits, IT audits, quality and operational audits, thus reducing the time and cost for organizations.

Know more about - IT compliance

EtQ CEO to Webinar in the integrated management system of quality and compliance of GFSI standards

EtQ is pleased to announce that it would submit its seminar, "GFSI standards and the quality of integrated management system", the Wednesday March 9 at 1: 00 pm EST.

Led by CEO Glenn McCarty of the EtQ, this seminar details how have changed the methods of monitoring of compliance over the years, such as the evolution of books written by hand to point solutions, solutions of automation of the company.

"The evolution of our business systems has led a challenge to get a holistic view and having transparency which is a necessity in GFSI compliance initiatives," said McCarty. "In this seminar we will discuss the challenges they face to create a comprehensive solution through integration and consolidation of business systems." "We will also detail how to combine quality processes and GFSI in one integrated system promotes efficiency, and how risk management can be used to help an organization to prioritize the risk by effectively filter and sort data."

For more information or to register on this free seminar, visit us on the Web at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/974724953.

About EtQ
EtQ is the leading enterprise quality and compliance management software for identification, mitigation and prevention of high risk through integration, automation and collaboration events. EtQ uses best in its class, embedded modules and the integration of business applications to manage and measure the quality and compliance processes and implement organizational changes. Key modules in the product include HACCP, corrective and measures preventive (CAPA), audits, complaint management, risk management, change management, Control documents, training employees, management of projects, protesters materials, Enterprise Reporting, and more than 20 additional oriented in compliance modules. With its first class flexible workflow, collaboration platform, EtQ has developed a unique niche support to companies involved in various initiatives management of compliance with rules such as: HACCP, SQF, BRC, IFS, as 9001, ISO 13485ISO 9001: 2008, ISO/TS 16949, ISO 14001, ISO 22000GMP (FDA), TL 9000, OHSAS 18001, RoHS, Sarbanes-Oxley and similar rules for compliance with rules and regulations management. EtQ has been providing solutions in compliance with rules for a variety of markets for more than 15 years.

For more information or to schedule a virtual demonstration, please contact EtQ Inc., at 800-354-4476 or 516-293-0949, or send us an email to info (at) etq (dot) com. visit EtQ in http://www.etq.com.

EtQ is a registered trademark of EtQ Management Consultants, Inc. All other product names and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

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Pharmaceutical Enterprise TOLMAR software selects integrated pilgrim of compliance with standards of quality solutions &

TAMPA, Florida-(BUSINESS WIRE) - Pilgrim Software, Inc., a global leading provider of software for the enterprise risk solutions, standards and management of quality (ERCQM), announced today that TOLMAR Inc., a Colorado-based pharmaceutical research, development, enterprise of industrial and commercial operationsHe has appointed to Pilgrim as its automated risk, supplier of systems of quality management and standards.

TOLMAR will implement solutions integrated Pilgrim for the management of document management and corrective & preventive action (layer). With the platform of Pilgrim in the workplace, the company will strengthen and maintain continuous compliance and increases operational efficiencies and cost-containment efforts.

In addition to the documents and layer management systems, TOLMAR will be gain visibility of fast data and have total control over format, appearance, and the context of all the reports of quality through SmartInsight ™ Report Writer of Pilgrim. This solution allows business users to create for professional registration, custom reports that you can save and reuse wherever you want immediately.

"TOLMAR is to adapt this model of integrated and automated solution that prepare our business for the future", said Francisco Gutierrez, Vice President of operations for quality & TOLMAR site. "We identified the need to improve our quality control procedures and provides workflow with what Pilgrim - a fully integrated process that much to improve efficiencies and allow the visibility of the entire company on key data quality and compliance with rules in real time and in all functions."

"With the robust flexibility and scalability in our solutions tools, Pilgrim provide TOLMAR an effective framework for continuous improvement in the platform of a quality system," said Prashanth Rajendran, Chief of operations of the Pilgrim. "Both the document and solutions of the layer, in tandem with the increased visibility reports, rise the harmonization and simplification of the processes of TOLMAR that increase efficiency and enable faster response to the needs of internal and external and expectations".

About TOLMAR

TOLMAR is a Northern Colorado pharmaceutical research, development, manufacturing and commercial operations company. TOLMAR develops and manufacturers of patented and generic pharmaceuticals with a focus on therapeutic areas of dental, Dermatology and Oncology. TOLMAR provides our customers with a competitive and sustainable combination of development of commercial products and services. Our strengths include proven, clinical development, regulatory and infrastructure of manufacturing with highly trained staff and experienced. For more information about the company, visit www.tolmar.com.

About Pilgrim Software, Inc.

Pilgrim Software, Inc. is a world leading provider of solutions for business risk, quality management and compliance with standards for global organizations. Through its integrated platform, Pilgrim helps organizations manage compliance with rules and industry, addressing possible risks, reduce manufacturing costs and improve customer satisfaction. Pilgrim has been appointed by Frost & Sullivan, society of management of compliance with standards of quality & American company of the year: best practices of and winner of his value improvement award 2010 North American best in-class Customer in business riskcompliance with and the market of quality management for the life sciences industry. For more information, visit the Web site of Pilgrim Software in www.pilgrimsoftware.com.

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