Security Operations

The vCISO service at Access Point Consulting is designed to complement and strengthen your existing IT and security teams––not replace them. We’ll work with you in a collaborative partnership, ensuring that the information security strategies we develop support and advance your organization's mission and objectives. Rest assured that initiatives that flow from the strategy will fit your goals, risk tolerance, and compliance requirements. Your vCISO will also provide the invaluable service of facilitating effective communication among IT, security, and senior leadership, ensuring that everyone is informed and aligned on security initiatives and strategies.

We’ll provide you full contact information and you’ll have multiple ways to reach your vCISO immediately. If for some reason your vCISO can’t pick up in that moment, you can expect to receive a response within 15 minutes.

Our vCISO service takes a methodical and collaborative approach to defining and implementing security policies. The process begins with an assessment of your organization's current security posture, risk appetite and tolerance. We evaluate your company’s existing policies, practices, security skills, and vulnerabilities. Based on the findings, your vCISO will draft security policies, playbooks, standards, and procedures that will bring your company into compliance. These are thoroughly vetted and approved. We then work with you to make these fully functional policies an integral and essential part of your organization's culture and day-to-day operations. Training sessions and awareness programs are put in place to support the effort. Your vCISO will assist in monitoring and enforcing policy adherence, implementing security controls and technologies to support policy enforcement. Finally, your vCISO will ensure that all security policies are documented in a clear and accessible manner to ensure ongoing compliance and adaptability to evolving security challenges.

Our risk assessments typically cover operational risk, information security and technology risk, compliance and regulatory risk, and strategic and reputational risk. By addressing risks within these categories, your organization is better positioned to manage and mitigate a wide range of potential threats and challenges. Access Point risk assessments are developed in collaboration with a designated resource from your organization who helps us understand your unique risks and can provide information and documentation. You’ll receive from us an honest assessment of your risk landscape and recommendations to resolve any issues discovered. Risk assessments are generally conducted periodically, on an as-needed basis, but we recommend updating your risk assessment quarterly or in response to major changes that affect your business such as mergers, acquisitions, changed industry regulations, and infrastructure buildouts.

We employ a comprehensive approach that includes ongoing monitoring of regulatory changes, regular audits, education and training, policy updates, and proactive risk management strategies. Access Point vCISOs receive a minimum of 40 hours of professional training annually and make it a priority to stay up-to-date on evolving regulations that impact your business. You can count on us to keep you informed of impending compliance challenges and changes in regulations that will affect your business. Our goal is to keep your organization current, reduce compliance risks, and facilitate a culture of compliance.

Access Point vCISOs are experts in the healthcare, financial services, technology, energy, and military sectors.

Our approach leverages a combination of industry-standard cybersecurity toolsets within your organization, third-party technologies, and privately developed toolsets. Your vCISO is supported by an in-house team of more than 100 technology experts who are charged with ensuring the technical accuracy of every assessment and recommendation. Senior technical engineers in their respective fields participate in an in-depth peer review process to validate the material for completeness, clarity, concision, and technical accuracy.

Access Point is committed to client data security. As security and privacy experts, we use state of the art cloud privacy and strong encryption with all data, at rest or in motion. We offer “crypto-shredding” of client data saved to our cloud environments. We will clearly articulate that once data has been crypto-shredded, that is a non-reversible data destruction event. Once data has been crypto-shredded there is no way to reverse the process. It is the final step of an engagement. This is comforting for clients that are concerned about any potential breaches or future breaches. The data is always encrypted and keys are encrypted and destroyed, resulting in unrecoverable encrypted data. Without the key, no one can recover the data, not even your vCISO.