Information Security Compliance and Governance

Protect your Information security investments through successful compliance and governance

We can help your business meet information security compliance and governance standards

Compliance and governance services protect your information security investments and prepares organizations for upcoming audits or compliance requirements. Birmingham Consulting helps businesses establish and maintain the controls to meet compliance standards used by your business. This includes Compliance Framework Certification Readiness Reviews, Incident Response Planning, Tabletop Exercise services and threat intelligence. As well as gather and store evidence to confirm compliance with those standards, manage policy approvals/versioning by stakeholders, and track user acceptance. We also ensure you are meeting your customer and client security requirements.

Types of information security compliance and governance services:

  • Compliance-As-A-Service (CaaS)
  • Compliance Framework Certification Readiness Reviews
  • Incident Response Planning
  • Tabletop Exercises
  • Threat intelligence

Book a consultation to learn more about our information security compliance and governance services

When it comes to information security, you can trust Birmingham Consulting to keep you armed with the best protective measures for your business. Book an information security consultation with us to find out how our services can augment your plans, tools, procedures and policies. Click below or call (289) 895-8948 to schedule.

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FAQ’s about compliance and governance in information security:

Ensuring Information Security Compliance with an Effective Incident Response Plan

An Incident Response Plan (also referred to as an IRP) is a formal, written document, approved by senior leadership, that outlines your organization’s approach to managing security incidents—before, during, and after a confirmed or suspected breach. The IRP defines roles and responsibilities, provides guidance on critical actions, and includes a list of key personnel who may need to be involved during a crisis.

Birmingham Consulting helps businesses create robust and responsive plans to address and mitigate the impact of a cyber incident. Incident response plans outline:

  • The objectives, key stakeholders, roles and responsibilities, communication strategies, and escalation procedures for each stage of the incident response lifecycle;
  • Ensure the plan remains straightforward and adaptable,
  • To maintain its effectiveness, test, review, and update the plan annually.

We can also help your business take your developed incident response plan to the next level, by testing it and training your staff simultaneously through a Tabletop Exercise (see below).

An important piece to supporting information security compliance and governance are Tabletop Exercises services

We provide Tabletop Exercise services for businesses who want to take their incident response plan and cyber emergency preparedness to the next level.

Our tabletop exercises are interactive, discussion-based sessions that are designed to prepare key team members for security incidents or breaches. During the exercise, participants review their roles, procedures, and responses to critical situations through simulated scenarios.

To foster collaboration and encourages questions & discussion, these sessions typically take place in a meeting-like environment with a guided facilitator. 

The purpose of a tabletop exercise is to familiarize participants with your organization’s incident response protocols. It simultaneously provides leaders with an opportunity to assess your preparedness in a low-risk environment. The core goal is to ensure that team members understand exactly what actions to take in an emergency.

How to know what frameworks or standards your business needs to be compliant with?

The answer depends on both internal and external factors. Your business needs to be compliant with security frameworks required by external factors such as legislation and 3rd-parties you do business with such as customers, financial institutions, credit card payment processors, etc.

Your business may also choose to voluntarily become compliance with security frameworks for business reasons such competitive differentiation and adherence to best practices within your specific industry.

Yes! There are a number of benefits to being compliant:

  • Cyber insurance – Cyber Insurance is essential, and the requirements insurance companies are putting into their policies are becoming stricter and stricter.
  • Win contracts – There’s nothing worse than losing a bid for a contract because you aren’t certified secure. Be pre-emptive and apply with confidence.
  • Adhere to oversight – If you work in a regulated industry, compliance is required for you to operate. Stay compliant and stay open for business.

A Cyber Insurance Requirements Compliance Review ensures amounts and situations covered align with the organization’s risk profile.

In conducting a cyber insurance review for a client, we found that their policy limits were less than 10% of the potential costs involved in a breach. The client’s insurance agent had simply sold them a policy available from his firm without knowing how to quantify cyber risk. So, we helped the client change providers to obtain the correct amount of cyber insurance.

Problem

Most insurance professionals do not understand how to quantify cyber risk and therefore unable to correctly size policies. And cyber insurance qualification requirements get stricter every renewal. Not keeping up with changing requirements could result in higher premiums or outright denial of coverage. In addition, we’ve found that many cyber insurance policies do not provide appropriate coverage for the organization being insured. 3rd-party liability is one of the most frequently missed coverages.

Solution

Review the cyber insurance policy annually to ensure amounts and situations covered align with the organization’s risk; and that the organization remains qualified for cyber insurance at a premium commensurate with that risk.

Positive Result

Ensure that coverage and premiums correctly match the organization’s risk profile.

ESG – Increasingly in demand by investors and stakeholders

Cyber and information security are becoming an increasingly important part of the ESG compliance journey. We partner with ESG consultants like This Rock to ensure you aren’t simply compliant – you’re actually secure (because compliant ≠ secure).

ESG stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance factors, which are non-financial elements deemed important or material to stakeholders. These factors can reveal additional risks and opportunities associated with an investment.

Information security compliance efficiency

A company conducting business in both the U.S. and Canada needed to meet CAN/DGSI 104:2021 Rev 1 2024 (Formerly CAN/CIOSC-104: 2021) with 50+ controls and NIST 800-53 (100+ controls). When the company gathered the required evidence for a single commonized set of controls, they automatically had the evidence required for both standards.

Problem

Security standards vary depending on the industry, oversight, jurisdiction, and regulatory bodies. Slight differences in wording for the same risk/control in each standard can lead to duplication of effort when gathering evidence of compliance.

Solution

Use a 3rd-party list of controls that encompasses multiple compliance standards (CMMC, NIST, CC104, ISO, etc.)

Positive Result

Complying with a single control ensures compliance for related controls across multiple standards.

Brace for financial impact with our Cyber Liability Calculator

Estimate the financial impact to your business from a cyber incident with our free and anonymous Cyber Liability Calculator.

Results include email fraud, ransom demand, downtime cost, remediation cost per industry statistics, 1st-Party liability, number of Personally Identifiable Records, Third-Party liability, legal costs associated with Third-Party liability and more!

Give it a try