Trace Security Compliance Manager

What is a risk assessment?

A Risk Assessment identifies reasonably foreseeable risks that could result in service interruption or unauthorized disclosure, misuse, alteration, or destruction of confidential information. The Risk Assessment process evaluates the likelihood and potential damage of the identified threats and assesses the sufficiency of safeguards in place, to control the identified risks. A Risk Assessment allows an organization to prioritize risk mitigation efforts

Why does an organization need a risk assessment?

The increased frequency of security incidents has resulted in new legislation at both the federal and state levels. Fundamental to meeting these regulations, including (GLBA, NCUA, FFIEC, HIPAA, etc.), are regularly-scheduled risk assessments that evaluate the likelihood and potential damage of the identified threats to your customer’s confidential information and assess the sufficiency of safeguards in place to control the identified risks to that information.

All organizations that rely on information technology as a critical business function, including those not specifically required by regulations, should ensure that the IT infrastructure is secure and dependable. A critical component of securing the infrastructure is a clear understanding of the security risks to the IT assets. A Risk Assessment takes a close look at the organization’s safeguards, vulnerabilities, threat vectors, asset information, and loss expectancies. Each individual risk is then analyzed and compared against other identified risks, enabling the organization to prioritize remediation efforts, preempting losses with most exposure. The Risk Assessment process is captured and managed through TraceSecurity’s RiskManager software that automates the process and provides a foundation for future Risk Assessments.

Why do organizations fail to perform regular risk assessments?

Whether you are in a regulated industry, a government agency or an organization seeking to benchmark against widely-accepted Best Practices, you will need to conduct regular, recurring information risk assessments as part of your information security program. Because methodologies are often viewed as complex and cumbersome, many organizations have relied on external firms to perform these activities on a contract basis. Unfortunately, it can be expensive to engage a third-party assessment team, and more importantly, it is unlikely that they will understand your business well enough to yield a meaningful result. Additionally, the organization may try to implement its own internal Risk Assessments program, but this usually puts a strain on key personnel’s time. Because of the high costs associated with performing a Risk Assessment and the amount of employee time that is invested in the process, organizations frequently fail to perform regular risk assessment leaving a gap in their security program. Other organizations have developed methods to perform internal Risk Assessments that are inefficient, do not follow best practice or regulatory standards, and/or lack repeatability.

How does Trace Risk Manager enable an organization to perform regular Risk Assessment?

A Risk Assessment is the first step of developing a risk management process and provides a point-in-time evaluation of the organization’s risk level. The organizational environment is constantly changing due to the addition of assets, changes in staff, and new threats. Each change in the organization’s environment can result in a change in the organization’s risk level, which requires the organization to implement a risk management process that includes ongoing Risk Assessment.

To solve the budget and personnel time issues, TraceSecurity has developed its Risk Manager solution that automates the Risk Assessment process to enable an organization to efficiently perform its own, on-demand Risk Assessment in a cost effective manner. Risk Manager is a Software-as-a-Servvice (SaaS) solution that eliminates the need to install or maintain the software on the organizations systems. Risk Manager provides a seamless transition from the TraceSecurity Risk Assessment to an in-house managed Risk Assessment program. RiskManager is included with TraceSecurity’s comprehensive Risk Assessment Solutions. TraceSecurity also provides Service Only options and Risk Manager as a stand-alone offering.

TraceSecurity's RiskManager facilitates the risk management process by providing a standard, repeatable framework for an organization to evaluate safeguards, vulnerabilities, threats, asset information and loss expectancies. It then assists in the analysis process and enables the organization to assess the focus areas to determine the organization’s overall risk.

Trace RiskManager offers many benefits to your organization:

Reduces employee resource costs of Risk Assessments

  • Streamlines the entire Risk Management process through an preconfigured framework of threats, assets and safeguards
    • Over 100 security controls
    • 15 Unique threat types
    • Predefined asset information
    • Predefined severity levels for threats, safeguards and vulnerabilities
  • Fully customizable threats, assets and safeguard parameters
  • Individually measures risk level of each asset related to:
    • Confidentiality
    • Integrity
    • Availability
  • Provides both quantitative and qualitative methodologies
  • Multi-user access
  • Continuously updated with new threats and expanded safeguards
  • Leverages previous risk assessment responses to minimize the time associated with controls that have not changed since the previous risk assessments

Develops a standard, repeatable audit process

  • Based upon industry standard risk assessment approaches including OCTAVE and NIST.
  • Integrated regulation information to aid in compliance.
  • Can easily be mapped to company-specific regulations and standards.
  • Customizable levels of risk assessment; one size does NOT fit all.
  • Framework guides multiple employees through the same risk assessment methodologies providing a standardized risk assessment process.

Creates standardized, accurate reports and thoroughly prepares the IT department for audits by regulatory boards

  • Creates a concise executive summary for management, board of directors and auditors.
  • Detailed reporting capabilities including charts and graphs.
  • User note section helps create a trail and lessens the time wasted trying to track information during examiner review.

Trace Risk Manager is delivered as a Software-as-a-Service (SAAS) solution, which means that the application is hosted and managed by TraceSecurity and is accessed via a web browser. The SAAS solution provides the following benefits:

  • Minimizes implementation and management costs to the organization
  • Reduces deployment time of the solution.
  • Reduces the employee time associated with the deployment.
  • Makes the solution available to any authorized user, anytime and anywhere, with an internet connection.
  • Eliminates the impact on the organizations network utilization.

Trace RiskManager is a standalone solution that can be integrated with TraceCompliance Manager providing a single interface to manage the IT Security Compliance process.