Controls and Compliance
Internal Controls are the structure, policies and procedures put in place to provide reasonable assurance that management meets its objectives and fulfils its responsibilities. Organizations are tasked with providing proper risk prevention, risk assessment, and effective internal controls across the entire organization to ensure all corporate compliance obligations are met. To greatly improve organizational control and compliance from the front line to the executive ranks, controls should be standardized and automated with workflow management systems. Controls are for better compliance.
Risk Management Framework
The first step in creating an effective risk-management system is to understand the qualitative distinctions among the types of risks that organizations face. Risks fall into several categories. Risk events from any category can be fatal to a company’s strategy and even to its survival. We support organizations with the identification and understanding of current and emerging risks as well as facilitating the use of Key Risk Indicators to identify, assess, monitor, review, and report risks.
Policies, Standards, Procedures and Guidelines
We support organizations develop and improve their policies, standards, procedures, and guidelines.
Policies state the operating principles of a company. They provide broad guidance to the enterprise on legal and regulatory requirements, employee conduct, information security, and financial integrity, and many other topics. They can be organization-wide, issue-specific, or system-specific. Your organization’s policies reflect your objectives. Your policies should be like a building foundation; built to last and resistant to change or erosion.
Standards provide the rules and controls that will help enforce the policy. They are what all employees must do to adhere to company policy. Standards are mandatory courses of action or rules that give formal policies support and direction.
Procedures are instructions – how things get done. Good procedures are multi-level and move from a broad, cross-functional view of the process down to the detailed steps. They may be isolated to a single department and changed by that department alone. Procedures detail step-by-step instructions to achieve a given goal or mandate. They are typically intended for internal departments and should adhere to strict change control processes.
Guidelines are recommendations to users when specific standards do not apply. Guidelines are designed to streamline certain processes according to what the best practices are.
Investigations and Breach Management
Investigation is an integral part of a breach response. Its goal is to clarify the circumstances of the breach, assess the damage caused by it, and develop a further plan of action depending on the results of the investigation. Ready to design effective breach management processes, or have had a breach and need help? Get in touch and we will help you through the process of redressing issues and preventing further breaches.