Member Article

How to manage cyber security risk affordably

Compliance expert Altius has launched a cyber security software package for those many businesses whose payroll doesn’t stretch to employing £10,000 per day experts.

According to a Manpower survey, demand for specialist cyber workers has increased four-fold over the past year, with top experts being paid more than £10,000 a day.

The Altius Exigo software is a low cost solution for addressing information security compliance across supplier networks.

Exigo has been successfully piloted by global creative agency Leo Burnett in the USA to improve management of information security and data privacy across its complex and large supply chain. This is enabling the world-leading advertising and marketing services agency to reduce risk, ensure compliance and automate management reporting.

“The eye-watering pay packets of cyber security experts demonstrates the demand for specialist support from nervous businesses, particularly in the wake of recent attacks on organisations such as Sony and TalkTalk,” said Len Simmons, Technical Director for Altius.

He continued “It is essential that businesses check IT security and data compliance among their suppliers - ensuring that these organisations have robust policies and measures in place to prevent common security failures. Organisations may have risk well managed within their own immediate business, but failings by their suppliers could expose them to data and security breaches that have the power to destroy reputations, business partnerships and profit margins.”

Erik Hart, VP Director, Information Security and Infrastructure Solutions at The Leo Burnett Group/Arc Worldwide, said: “Altius has helped us create efficiencies in the way we assess the security and compliance of our suppliers. By utilising the Altius portal we can create automated touch points with our suppliers, as well as generating reporting, as needed, on various data points.”

The Exigo software is cloud-based, so requires no hardware or software installation. It can be integrated with existing enterprise systems and has an in-built audit trail to create full visibility of supplier compliance and enable instant retrieval of records and information. It also provides automated report generation and data exportation compatible with other business formats, such as Excel.

In addition to managing information and data security compliance, the software can be configured to assess performance and compliance for many other areas of business areas, such as health and safety, environmental bribery and corruption policies, CSR, quality, and environmental and employment law.

Altius software and compliance management services are used by many leading organisations as part of their risk management strategies. Clients include Morrisons, Selfridges, Airbus, Trust Inns, Punch Taverns, Arcadia Group, Superdrug, Bellrock, B&Q and Debenhams.

Further information www.altiusva.com

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Altius .