Why Worry About Your Firm’s Security When Security Consultants are here?

Security Consultants are qualified individuals having the capability to work under strict environment bounded by responsibilities of making sure that the company or organization is secure and its operations are incorporated with crucial security guidelines. They also have general management skills to run a business, but their specialization is linked with keeping the organization secure and Trojan free.

These professionals have a range of skills. They are equipped with core skills and have been trained for confidence as they are a part of the security industry. Completing a vast consultancy practice with running organization enables their internal potential to be visible. They have knowledge about technical things like SIEM, software development, methodology re-engineering, etc.

Certifications associated with security consultants are:

1. CISSP
2. CISM
3. CISA
4. PCI
5. QAS
6. GCFA

There are certain frameworks which consultants must follow such as COBIT, PCI DSS, ISO, HMG’s security policy framework so on and so forth.

In today’s environment, security challenges are highly risky and abundant and need to be tackled very intelligently to ensure the survival of the firm. Otherwise what happens is that the firm gets dropped from riskier to riskiest situations where the competitors easily bound them out from the market.

Our consultants help you in meeting these complex challenges with their proactive solutions while working on site as well as off site for your security. Cyber world has grown to such a huge extent that only qualified and trained consultants have the ability to cater these challenges.

Further examples of such organizational risks can be as follows:

1. For example, you want to enter a new market with the assurance of success
2. Supervise the fluctuations in risk level and intensity
3. Security of the business in the domestic as well as international level
4. Possibility plans to be made to stay alert for any xyz consequences
5. Resourcing of security duties and maintenance of such duties as per the standards

They assist you by designing strategic solutions to secure the company’s assets and decrease the probability of loss from operating risks. They also develop disaster and elasticity plans for the organization to minimize the effect of harmful effects of an incident to tolerable levels for the organizations. This highly safeguards the company from significant losses.

Professional security consultants also review the current security infrastructure and audit it thoroughly to come up with new benchmark standards for companies to follow in order to stay in the green zone and not slide down into the red zone. They also provide training services to the organization employees as they believe the employees are the front end people who know their tasks more than anyone else. So they take the feedback from the employees to better understand the designing of security related strategies.

Top Benefits of Security Audits

Security audits are part of security and networks, their aim is to keep security measure in check to remove any vulnerability from the system. With the expansion observed in cyber-crime there is an increase in need of a comprehensive audit with the core focus on the security and safety of the IT infrastructure and data associated with it. The audit focuses on both Physical Access and virtual Data Security. So, why need regular security audits? Here, we are discussing them in detail.

Important security features:

There is a list of security features with regard to physical and virtual security will be audited and they are recorded as:

1. Data Access Control 
2. User Authentication System 
3. Data Folder Structure / Permission 
4. Storage Media Control 
5. Data Protection /Data Leak Protection 
6. Internet / Intranet
7. Email/network/software Security 
8. Firewall Setup 
9. Anti-Spyware Setup /Anti-SPAM Setup / Anti-Virus / 
10. Software Patch Management 
11. Vulnerability Assessment 
12. General Assessment (fire protection, security personnel, and burglar alarms,)

Any other security related features which may be left will be taken into consideration during the auditing on need basis. The data and information gathered forms the basis of the Audit recommendations, the first thing auditing team does an AS-IS Analysis of the security environment and maps it according business processes, objective and goals of the organization.

The auditing findings are then documented in Audit Report (which is a detailed presentation of complete AS-IS analysis, assessed issues and possible challenges) in the existing IT infrastructure.

The benefits:

1. Deficits and gaps in the security features, the failure point or simply vulnerabilities that are considered hinders in business continuity. The security audit recommendations focus on correcting things which are assumed to cause serious issues in the future. 
2. The security audit report also focuses on identifying data leakage pathways and unethical data access vulnerabilities.
3. The prime focus of creating comprehensive system audit report is to ensure the maximized security of the IT systems.
4. On the other hand, the AS-IS based report is the observation and situations to assess the system in various folds. Cost and utilization anomalies, are also highlighted in the detailed report (even from the darkest hidden part). 
5. Considering the audit report, the auditing team will recommend a possible solution to eradicate assessed vulnerabilities and to seal the data leakage pathways to ensure the security of IT system. 
6. The recommendations may include, downgrade, upgrade or even change of solutions to affect the long term security plan for the assessed system.

Purpose:

The purpose of a security audit is to offer an organization ways to improve its Return On Investment (ROI). According to security experts, the successful audit would be considered as one which does not need for further investment on the system; rather help the management to remove every possible vulnerability from the existing system. The additional benefits would be:

• Productivity benefits 
• Cost-saving benefits 
• Relationship benefits
• Security benefits