Compliance

How Can Your Business Be Impacted By The New SEC Cybersecurity Requirements?

January 10, 2024

Cybersecurity has become paramount for businesses across the globe. As technology advances, so do the threats. Recognizing this, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has introduced new rules. They revolve around cybersecurity. These new requirements are set to significantly impact businesses.

Understanding the new SEC cybersecurity requirements

The SEC’s new cybersecurity rules emphasize the importance of proactive cybersecurity measures. These are for businesses operating in the digital landscape.

One of the central requirements is the timely reporting of cybersecurity incidents. The other is the disclosure of comprehensive cybersecurity programs.

The rules impact U.S. registered companies, as well as foreign private issuers registered with the SEC.

Reporting of cyber-security incidents

The first rule is the disclosure of cybersecurity incidents deemed to be “material.” Companies disclose these on a new item 1.05 of Form 8-K.

Companies have a time limit for disclosure. This is within four days of the determination that an incident is material. The company should disclose the nature, scope, and timing of the impact.

It also must include the material impact of the breach. One exception to the rule is where disclosure poses a national safety or security risk.

Disclosure of cyber-security protocols

This rule requires extra information that companies must report. They report this on their annual Form 10-K filing.

The extra information companies must disclose includes:

Their processes for assessing, identifying, and managing material risks from cybersecurity threats.
Risks from cyber threats that have or are likely to materially affect the company.
The board of directors’ oversight of cybersecurity risks.
Management’s role and expertise in assessing and managing cybersecurity threats.

Potential impact on your business

Here are some of the potential areas of impact on businesses from these new SEC rules.

Increased Compliance Burden – Businesses will now face an increased compliance burden as they work to align their cybersecurity policies with the new SEC requirements.

Focus on Incident Response – The new regulations underscore the importance of incident response plans. Businesses will need to invest in robust protocols. These are protocols to detect, respond to, and recover from cybersecurity incidents promptly. This includes having clear procedures for notifying regulatory authorities, customers, and stakeholders.

Heightened Emphasis on Vendor Management – Companies often rely on third-party vendors for various services. The SEC’s new rules emphasize the need for businesses to assess vendor practices. Meaning, how vendors handle cybersecurity. This shift in focus necessitates a comprehensive review of your vendor’s security policies.

Impact on Investor Confidence – Cybersecurity breaches can erode investor confidence and damage a company’s reputation. With the SEC’s spotlight on cybersecurity, investors are likely to take note. This includes scrutinizing businesses’ security measures more closely. Companies with robust cybersecurity programs may instill greater confidence among investors.

Innovation in Cybersecurity Technologies – As businesses strive to meet the new SEC requirements, they will seek innovation. There is bound to be a surge in the demand for advanced cybersecurity solutions. This increased demand could foster a wave of innovation in the cybersecurity sector.

Cyber-Compliance Is Serious Business

December 14, 2023

If you’ve never experienced a cyberattack, you might not think it’s such a big deal.

Especially if you work in management, you’re so busy focusing on the so-called squeaky wheels of every day; does it really matter if you keep up with the intricacies of modern cybersecurity compliance protocol? YES!

Increased digitization across the globe plus ever-advancing cyber threats equals a constantly evolving market, and legislation that scrambles to keep up.

Why Reporting Matters in a Data Breach

Have you ever experienced a cyberattack, either aimed at you or leveled at your organization? If so, then you might already know how important it is to report the breach – and we don’t just mean to your direct managers or the police!

When a data breach happens, you are often beholden to laws detailing what, how fast and to whom you must disclose. For example, financial institutions have to notify the Federal Trade Commission within thirty days.

You typically have to disclose the breach to anyone affected too, depending on what information was stolen. Where do you work? Do you know the laws set upon your industry and role?

So not only does cyber-compliance affect your ability to protect yourself and your customers from a data breach, but that hack will affect customers’ trust in your ability to keep their personal and financial information safe.

There are also legal concerns to think about. Lawsuits can cost millions between legal fees, penalties, profit losses and disruptions to the daily workflow.

Consider that the average company spends $10K per employee on cyber-compliance, and you see why maintaining compliance saves millions – about half of what you’d spend if you let vulnerabilities lay rampantly unpatched.

Maintaining compliance isn’t just smart; it’s necessary. To foster good relationships with your customers and shareholders, and avoid fines and breaches, companies must maintain a compliant cybersecurity structure.

These regulations change over time but do so to keep up with the latest tricks up cybercriminals’ sleeves.

Our IT services include compliance as part of our all-in-one package to reduce excess labor on your end. We’ll stay up to date on changing regulations so you stay cyber-compliant!

Reporting is one of many important regulations that make you more cyber-secure. Think about it: If your bank accounts, or health records, or mailing information got leaked, wouldn’t you want to know?

It’s not just about preferences, though. Data privacy is a right in many countries across the globe. More and more, people and legislation are all pushing for better data privacy protections.

How can we keep our accounts and data private if we don’t know when a breach has occurred? If you don’t know YOUR reporting requirements, now is the time to find out! Give us a call.

Got Compliance? Simplifying HIPAA And PCI Requirements

September 21, 2012

By Tech Experts Staff
Many of our clients from health care providers to any business that accepts credit cards via in house applications have compliance standards they must meet.

The health care industry in particular has to be compliant with HIPAA and possibly PCI as well. So, with compliance being such an important issue what are some ways businesses can be sure they are in compliance?

At Tech Experts we offer many different services that are designed to help your business be more compliant with the strict standards in place by HIPAA and PCI.

HIPAA was established in 1996 at a time when the health care industry was starting to move away from paper and rely on computerized documentation for day to day operations. With this new technology being used brought more security risks that needed to be addressed as a whole; this is what brought about HIPAA.

While new technology is great in improving productivity businesses have to learn to adapt to the new security risks that come into play when using these production increasing technologies.

One of the first services we offer to clients is our Email Hosting services. We have various offerings with email based off of POP email and Exchange email. For compliance we offer archiving services with both one year and ten year retention policies.

We also offer solutions that are encrypted so the traffic cannot be easily captured and read which protects the information you send by email.

The second service we offer to clients needing to meet compliance standards is our offsite backup system.

Our offsite backups send your important data over encrypted connections just like the email system protecting your data from theft as it travels from your location to the safety of our datacenters.

Depending on your ability to function in the event of a disaster/outage we also offer disaster recovery options to help your business continue to function should your primary server go down.

The third service we offer is managed services. With managed services you can be sure that your computer always has an up to date, high end, antivirus installed. We monitor the antivirus that is installed on all of our managed service clients workstations and servers to ensure they are safe and secure.

While an antivirus does not guarantee you will not get an infection (because no antivirus can guarantee this) having a good one does ensure that the likelihood of being infected is greatly reduced.

With our managed services offering, we also monitor failed login attempts to see if there are any brute force attacks targeting your network. This lets us quickly address a problem before it becomes a network breach. Patch management is another feature of managed services that helps with compliance.

Patch Management ensures that your computers are kept up to date with the latest security patches.

Our managed services plans also include remote service and support. We offer a robust remote support feature that allows us to troubleshoot and correct almost any issue remotely.

The ability to offer such a comprehensive remote support tool means that we can more quickly address issues you run into without having to actually come out to your location.

Another component we offer to make your business more compliant is our server and workstation packages. Any server we offer can be programmed to make your business more compliant.

From enforcing regular password changes, account lockout policies, to hardware or software restriction policies, our servers are sure to improve your current network configuration.

With all of our services bundled a business can vastly improve their security and become more compliant than they were previously.

If your curious how compliant your business is, give us a call. We can setup a security evaluation based on the requirements for your industry. We can then offer some suggestions to improve your network’s security and compliance.