CYBERSECURITY & IT CONSULTING

A sound disaster recovery and business continuity plan (DR/BCP) is crucial in protecting your business from operational and reputational losses caused by major failures or disasters and cybersecurity incidents. In general, a DR/BCP is designed to reduce the disruption caused by these failures and disasters through a combination of preventative and response controls. We can assist with developing a DR/BCP to meet the following objectives:

• Create a plan that is designed to maintain, resume, and recover mission-critical business processes in the event of a failure or disaster
• Assign roles and responsibilities to key stakeholders and organize these roles to ensure proper management and oversight of the DR/BCP
• Complete a comprehensive business impact analysis that considers the functions and processes of each department and assigns a recovery time objective and recovery point objective for each process
• Design methodology to validate the DR/BCP through practical testing
• Develop practices to periodically update the DR/BCP to reflect changes in operations and vendor relationships
• Adhere to applicable regulatory guidelines and/or industry standards and best practices

We start with a gap assessment or gap analysis to evaluate an organization’s overall control environment and identify gaps. We use a 3-point rating system (high, medium, low) to indicate how significant the gaps identified are.

Our information security gap analysis helps to determine if your IT operations align with guidelines set forth by NIST and other industry standards. Ultimately, the objective of this review is to address potential gaps within your control environment in an effort to mitigate overall risk exposure.

The scope of the information security gap analysis includes:

• Interviews with IT and information security personnel
• Review of administrative, physical, and technical controls
• Review of IT and security-related policies and procedures
• Review of adherence to IT and cybersecurity best practices

Upon completion of this review we will provide a summary report outlining areas of improvement, control weaknesses, and recommendations for remedial action.

Once we have identified and prioritized the risks facing your operations, we take steps to minimize their occurrence or mitigate damage. Physical threats to facilities, equipment and inventory can be addressed by proven defenses such as fire suppression and control systems, perimeter security, and routine maintenance programs.

Hand-in-hand with a response plan is a business continuity plan that details how you will recover after a disaster occurs. For your company’s data and information this must include secure backup and archiving of critical files on a daily basis (if not more frequently). The backup must be automatic, digital and include secure off-site storage so that you can quickly re-establish access to files. This step may require an upgrade to your computing capacity and bandwidth.

It is important to identify which parts of your business would be most affected by cyberattack, natural disaster, fire or other catastrophe. We focus on assets that are both mission critical and irreplaceable. Using quantitative analysis, we prioritize risks which might damage or destroy those assets and disrupt your business.

For example, inventory lost in a fire can be replaced and the financial loss covered by insurance. But customer records that are compromised by a cyber hacker may be tainted and unrecoverable. Some risks cannot be anticipated (global pandemic or natural disaster), while others are more likely to occur (everyone is susceptible to ransomware).

Just as critical to ongoing operations are threats to business systems: computers, servers, mobile devices, networks and data storage files. A separate inventory and risk assessment will help to identify weaknesses in your cyber defense posture, which can be addressed in the development of a Written Information Security Plan (WISP), a document mandated by law in many states.

These cybersecurity measures should include investment in secure hard drives and uninterruptible power sources, advanced email and phishing protection, data encryption and secure archiving, dark web scanning and monitoring, and cyber security training for all employees – typically the weakest link in the cyber security chain.

Cloud storage of data is currently the most reliable way to secure data while providing quick access when required. We’ll recommend a cloud environment that is right for your business and your needs, that it is truly secure and will be readily scalable when your company’s growth necessitates expansion.

We will prepare an “immediate response” document to provide a step-by-step game plan for reacting to a cyberattack or other catastrophic event. Easy to follow checklists help guide company leadership in stabilizing operations and getting things back on track as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Being prepared to respond to a cyber attack or ransomware demand starts with something as simple as a company contact list, with names, phone numbers and email addresses of critical personnel who should be contacted in the event of an event. Each member of the management team should be assigned a recovery role and trained how to execute it.

Other checklists cover critical steps such as data recovery procedures, incident reporting requirements, equipment replacement lists, customer communications processes, and mitigation of damage to key assets. Time is money, so the plan should include a recovery time objective to make repairs, restore systems and minimize downtime so you can resume operations as rapidly as possible.