So is your enterprise truly GRC-ready? Here are some tips to help your enterprise effectively achieve GRC goals this year:

Develop a valuable risk management strategy: A perfect Governance, risk and compliance plan can be followed only when you develop an effectual risk management strategy. This strategy must incorporate essential processes and policies to enable optimum risk management and mitigation throughout the enterprise. A proactive approach is the best mechanism to tackle risks across your enterprise.

Entrench core enterprise processes with GRC initiatives: Automated GRC solutions offer immense benefits for your enterprise by ensuring cost savings, mitigating risks and also efficiently tackling compliance-related concerns. Therefore, pushing in GRC procedures into key processes can help you enhance business performance.

Opt for a 24X7 GRC solution: A solution that can offer best monitoring capabilities, and can scrutinize threats on a 24X7 basis is the most desirable.

Plug threats in advance: Swift and significant analysis can ensure that looming threats are dealt with effectively. Hence by capturing all data and analyzing them for threat patterns, incidents, or security events you can take proactive measures to tackle threats before they harm your enterprise.

Integration is the key: When you opt for Governance risk and compliance software, an integrated solution is perhaps the best bet for optimized GRC. Therefore a solution which can offer an integrated governance risk and compliance support system works best. The idea is to simplify and reduce the time spent on regulatory compliance and its corollary certification requirements. Therefore the same solution needs to cater to and offer total end-to-end automated processes for security, risk management and compliance requirements.

Being GRC-ready is easier once your enterprise understands the importance of risk management and the need to abide by regulatory standards. And the above-mentioned tips can be quite valuable for your enterprise in its GRC endeavors.

The post Top Tips to be GRC-Ready in 2011 appeared first on Aegify.

Get cracking; threats are real!

Threats to systems and networks worldwide have been on the rise. For instance, the blaster worm in 2009 managed to shut down close to 120,000 systems in just 3 minutes, ensuring that networks across the world were affected. In another such attack, the Slammer worm infected nearly 55 million hosts per second in just 11 minutes. Susceptibilities in enterprise systems and the perpetrators of such actions are increasing globally, and IT organizations are more and more vulnerable to these attacks.

Be it internal or external, security threats can cause not just financial losses, but can also tarnish the image of an enterprise. Hence threat management has to take precedence over other activities. Enterprises should therefore follow best practices and invest in the best solutions to manage security threats effectively.

What are the best practices for effective threat management?

Managing threats is not an easy task, especially because enterprises today want their threat management efforts to coincide with compliance management as well. So an ideal threat management solution should essentially:

• Crack multiple data-centric information security challenges
• Decipher and detect in real-time advanced persistent and pervasive threats
• Detect automatically for any kind of data leakages
• Search for insider threats
• Provide detailed malware analysis
• Undertake continuous and automatic controls verification including e-discovery
• Deliver a holistic solution for both security as well as for IT- Governance and Risk Compliance that can be easily monitored through an integrated dashboard
• Provide an end-to-end automatic enterprise security solution that is all encompassing for compliance, audit and risk management needs.
• Swiftly update software with latest information
• Stay ahead of potential threats
• Thwart threats at their source

A company’s network, its information systems, databases, and processes are essentially its backbone. Hence, they must be made secure from threats, both internal and external. Therefore, deploying the right threat management system can prevent data breach and safeguard the company’s networks, systems and assets.

The post Best Practices for Threat management appeared first on Aegify.

Security risks are now at their peak, with attackers continually adopting new techniques to break firewalls and hack networks. Hence, the amount of research done by security vendors, and how they apply the findings in developing their governance risk and compliance solutions, is one important factor to be considered while choosing the right vendor for your business.  Market research has revealed that those vendors, who invest judiciously in security research, develop better products that are capable of protecting customers not only against the prevailing threats, but also from future attacks.

Here are some tips to help you find the right security vendor for your business. The ideal vendor should fulfill the following criteria:

1. Should be Stable: Longevity and a large install base are the main indicators of stability. Therefore, always go for a software provider who has been around for years. They are better experienced and can guide you with the right solutions for your business risks.

1. Should be referable: The vendor should be able provide you with references of companies using their security services. You can be sure that those vendors, who readily offer a list of references, are the ones who have been providing satisfactory services. Hence they are the most reliable.

1. Should understand you: A vendor who is able to best understand your business needs is the most suitable for your company. Good vendors will be familiar with your specific business needs, or will take the time to learn. They take the time to understand how you work as a company, do a vulnerability scanning to determine the possible risks, and devise methods to curb them. They must evaluate your business processes and be able determine whether all your functions are in accordance with rules and regulations.

Apart from the criteria listed above, also consider other factors such as customer service, warranties, and free upgrades. Remember that your budget for a security service cannot be compromised. Hence, you should also bear in mind, the number of users who will benefit from this software, and the license and customization fees charged by the vendor.

The ‘loss prevention approach’ to security solutions should be another key factor in determining the right vendor for your business. A good security vendor is always capable of providing an end-to-end security solution, which will address present and future threats and help achieve loss prevention in all areas of your business.

The post Choosing the Right Vendor for Your Business appeared first on Aegify.