The Importance of Security Audits Before Year-End Deadlines

As a technology leader, you likely have lots on your plate – from standing up new technology tools and resources to onboarding new team members and even building technology strategies for 2025. But what about your security audit? According to a study completed by IBM in conjunction with Enterprise Strategy Group, results show that 45% of IT decision-makers stated that their organization’s compliance program is mature, and another 52% say they are properly staffed to run those compliance programs.

While these numbers are encouraging, we at White Rock aim to help our customers improve their compliance and security operations, moving the needle from a nonexistent or beginning stage of maturity to fully mature. And it all starts with auditing.

10 Reasons to Audit

Taking a step back, why is auditing so important to maintaining a strong security posture? We outline 10 reasons to audit below:

1. Compliance with Regulations: Many industries are governed by strict regulations, such as SOC 2, PCI DSS, NIST, or HIPAA. Regular audits help ensure your organization meets these compliance requirements, avoiding hefty fines and legal penalties. In fact, in the same IBM study mentioned above, 16% of decision-makers are most concerned with the cost of recovery to achieve said compliance, and another 15% are concerned with fines related to failing compliance regulations.

2. Protection Against Evolving Threats: Cybersecurity threats evolve constantly. Audits help identify new vulnerabilities in your systems and processes, enabling you to stay ahead of potential attacks like ransomware, phishing, or data breaches.

3. Safeguarding Sensitive Data: Protecting customer, employee, and business data is crucial to maintaining trust. An audit ensures your data is stored, processed, and transmitted securely, reducing the risk of breaches or unauthorized access.

4. Strengthening Incident Response: Audits assess your organization’s preparedness to respond to security incidents, including evaluating your incident response plan and ensuring it is up-to-date and effective in mitigating damage from potential breaches.

5. Building Customer and Partner Confidence: Demonstrating a proactive approach to security reassures customers and business partners that their data and interactions with your organization are secure, strengthening relationships and trust.

6. Cost Savings from Proactive Risk Management: Identifying and addressing vulnerabilities early can save significant costs associated with breaches, such as remediation expenses, legal fees, and reputation damage.

7. Supporting Business Growth: Scaling operations often introduces new risks. A security audit ensures your systems can handle growth while maintaining robust protections. On top of that, audits provide insights that align IT and security practices with broader business and growth objectives, ensuring security investments support organizational goals effectively. All that is to say, by aligning these strategies, you promote awareness and accountability across teams, embedding security as a core part of your organization’s culture.

Audit isn’t just about meeting deadlines – it’s an opportunity to protect your organization and set the foundation for long-term success. But when is the best time to complete your audit?

Adhering to Internal Audit Deadlines

As the year winds down, many organizations are racing to complete their annual security audits. For companies with internal deadlines to finalize these by year’s end, the clock is ticking. While some businesses push these essential tasks to Q4, delaying could lead to significant challenges in securing a reliable auditor and meeting compliance goals.

Procrastination not only risks missing critical deadlines but also increases the likelihood of rushed audits that could overlook key security issues. Instead of delaying, organizations should prioritize their audit to ensure compliance, maintain customer trust, and reduce risk.

Sticking to a yearly schedule to complete your audits could help maintain those internal deadlines. While continuous security monitoring is crucial, establishing a timeline for completing formal audits will help you stay on top of emerging threats and adhere to larger governing bodies’ regulations and frameworks.

How White Rock Can Help

If you’re staring down a Q4 deadline,  White Rock has the resources and availability to help you complete your security audit on time. Our team works efficiently to provide:

• Comprehensive Security Assessments: Identify gaps and vulnerabilities in your IT infrastructure.

• Tailored Audit Processes: Adapt to the specific requirements of your industry and regulatory standards, including the following frameworks: SOC 2 Readiness, PCI Readiness, CMMC Readiness, NIST, HIPAA, Cyber Insurance, and CJIS.

• Timely Turnaround: Work with your schedule to meet internal and external deadlines before 2024 comes to a close.

White Rock Cybersecurity’s Compliance Assessment and Auditing will help you meet your compliance goals and proactively identify and resolve any security weaknesses before they become critical issues.

Don’t Wait Until It’s Too Late

Q4 is the busiest season for audits, and finding a qualified partner becomes more challenging as the year progresses. By choosing White Rock, you can bypass scheduling headaches and ensure your audit is completed thoroughly and on time.

Learn more about our compliance audits and schedule yours today to meet your year-end deadlines with confidence. 

For more information about White Rock Cybersecurity, contact us for more information.

Building Relationships at White Rock Con

What started as a unique way to bring our team together after the pandemic has now emerged into White Rock Con, an annual networking and professional development event held at our headquarters in Dallas. Since our first event in 2022, we’ve re-defined our purpose for getting together and paid special attention to connecting and finding ways to build better experiences for our customers.

This year, White Rock Con (WRC) ran for two days, October 2nd and 3rd, and we invited our partners and fellow colleagues from across the country to participate.

Education through Partner Connection

On day one of White Rock Con, we hosted a mini trade show at our offices, showcasing dozens of partners and vendors. Our team had the opportunity to connect with old and new partners to learn more about their solution offerings and how we can pass the benefits on to our customers. As our team moved around the room, they made connections with each partner at the event throughout both the morning and afternoon sessions.

This portion of the event was a great reminder of continuous education. It’s so important to ensure our team is fully aware of each security offering and any new innovations that have been introduced, not only for our own development but so that we know what solutions will best serve our customers’ unique needs.

Improving Skills through Professional Development Workshops

On the second day of WRC, we focused internally and led some amazing workshops for our team. After a brief quarterly business review, our leadership team held a workshop on relationship management, reminding the team of the importance of the prior day’s networking.

We also learned a thing or two from our marketing department on how to promote events, generate leads, and nurture prospects. The team provided some great insights into best practices for following up with attendees after the event to thank them for coming and to continue the great conversations. They also shared some ideas for email campaigns, social posts, and blogs that you’ll be seeing more of very soon.

The Sun Sets on a Great WRC

I want to thank everyone for making such a successful White Rock Con 2024, including our incredible internal team, our partners and vendors, and all the third-party caterers and companies we worked with to provide food and swag to our attendees.

And speaking of food, I want to give a special shout out to our partners who catered breakfast and lunch and hosted dinners throughout the event. I think it’s safe to say that no one left Dallas hungry!

We’re already well into 2025 planning and look forward to another successful White Rock Con next October.  

For more information about White Rock Cybersecurity, contact us for more information.

Understand How to Protect Your Organization Against Business Email Compromise Attacks

Hackers are launching incredibly sophisticated Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks with losses surpassing $50 billion globally, according to a study done by the FBI in 2023.

And on top of that, BEC 3.0, the use of legitimate services to unleash an attack, presents an incredible challenge for the global enterprise.

So, how can you stay abreast of BEC attacks and prepare your organization to be proactive in the face of these threats?

Check Point challenges businesses to get their email security in better health and prevent BEC threats from ever occurring in the first place. Watch the webinar to learn where traditional email applications can leave you exposed and how Check Point catches the most sophisticated BEC attacks, harnessing your organization with the right tools to protect itself.

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Watch the On-Demand Webinar with Check Point now.

Interested in learning more about these tools? Contact an expert today.

*Please note that gift cards were available to live attendees. If you’re interested in learning more about receiving an assessment from Check Point, please reach out to us today.

Understanding the Impact of Ransomware on Your Business

Over the last few years, we’ve seen new technologies enter the scene, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). And while these technologies were developed to improve business workflows and reduce operational costs, there are malicious actors using them for the wrong reasons.

Even as Darth Vader himself says, “If you only knew the power of the dark side,” we can’t succumb to the forces of ransomware attacks, hackers, or cybersecurity threats.

If Mr. Vader isn’t enough of a red flag, in 2023 alone, 75% of companies reported being the victim of at least one ransomware attack; and on top of that, 26% reported being targeted at least four times. Additionally, according to The Hacker News, the volume of attacks grew 55.5% year-over-year from 2022, and that trend is continuing in 2024 with two major attacks to healthcare systems just this year.

So, what does this mean for your company? We recently held a webinar with Halcyon, the leading anti-ransomware platform, and their Global Security and Risk Executive, Ben Carr, to discuss the state of ransomware and what companies must do to protect key assets. This blog highlights some major themes from the conversation, but if you’d like to watch the full webinar, click here.

You need more than just an EDR platform

When evaluating an organization’s cybersecurity posture, many IT teams look to endpoint protection platforms (EPP) or endpoint detection and response platforms (EDR) to secure their assets. An EPP is a type of security solution that protects endpoint solutions, including laptops, desktops, phones, tablets, and servers. An EDR, on the other hand, is a system that gathers data from endpoints to detect threats and respond appropriately.

And while historically these platforms were seen as the highest level of protection, in recent years, we’ve seen threat actors bypassing these platforms’ security and attacking organizations’ core systems.

“In fact, from October through December of 2023, we saw over 2,500 threats bypass endpoint assets,” said Carr, Halcyon's Global Security and Risk Executive. “These endpoint protection platforms are geared more towards protection against malware, which is a very different strand from ransomware. And to go one step further, the EDR cycle isn’t fast enough to react to ransomware behaviors, as it first must detect nuances, investigate them, and then identify a path to respond appropriately; organizations nowadays don’t have the time to wait when there’s a ransomware attack.”

That’s where Halcyon comes in.

Why Halcyon is the difference maker in ransomware

Halcyon is different. Rather than acting as an all-encompassing protection platform, Halcyon is built specifically to protect organizations from ransomware, making them experts in the field.

The Halcyon Platform was developed on three core principles:

1. Prevention

2. Data Exfill Prevention

3. Recovery

Prevention

The goal of Prevention is to stop ransomware attacks before the attacker even breaks into the system.

“We actually deploy an agent that sits on your endpoint, preventing ransomware from executing,” said Carr. “There’s no ransomware payment, no extortion payment, no damage, no disruptions; it’s business as usual.”

Over the last year, Halcyon has stopped 8,000 instances of ransomware attacks.

Data Exfill Prevention

The second principle, Data Exfill Prevention, focuses on data coming and going from systems. Any data that leaves is automatically flagged and prevented from leaving. Instead of assuming the right person with the right access is moving data, Halcyon marks it as malicious and investigates the migration immediately. This prevents data loss and helps organizations maintain compliance. 

Recovery

Lastly, the Recovery stage basically acts as a failsafe, in the unlikely event that ransomware does evade the platform.

“Halcyon actually captures the keys from the data encryption and distributes them back to the agent to unencrypt the data,” said Carr. “This ensures faster recovery time, reduces costs, and eliminates backup restoration risk.”

With the state of cybersecurity changing daily, it’s paramount that your organization stays on top of threats with the best cybersecurity solutions on the market to prevent attacks and save you valuable time and money.

If you have any questions about the best solutions for your organization’s needs or are ready to make the switch to a tool that will specifically prevent ransomware, reach out to us today. We’re always here to help!

How Regular Pen Testing Can Save Your Business

Learn from Matt Hosburgh, founder of uMercs, about the importance of penetration testing.

Here’s what we’ll cover!

• The State of Pen Testing (and no, not the ink kind of pen)

• What the difference is between proactive vs. reactive cybersecurity approaches

• Real-world examples of businesses that have successfully mitigated

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Watch the On-Demand Webinar with uMercs now.

Interested in learning more about these tools? Contact an expert today.

*Please note that gift cards were available to live attendees. If you’re interested in learning more about the Pen Test, please reach out to us today.

White Rock Consulting Assessment Services with Strattmont Group

Did you hear the news? White Rock has launched Assessment Services through Strattmont Group!

Join us for a webinar with White Rock's Director of Sales, Nathan Trifone, and Strattmont Group’s CIO, Darren Knopp, as they discuss the importance of assessment services for audit and how White Rock and Strattmont Group can help your organization stay and remain compliant.

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Watch the On-Demand Webinar with Strattmont Group now.

Interested in learning more about these tools? Contact an expert today.

White Rock Announces Newest Product Offering: Compliance Assessment Services Through White Rock Consulting

White Rock partners with certified compliance auditor Strattmont Group to deliver assessment services

White Rock Cybersecurity is launching a new product under the name White Rock Consulting to deliver compliance assessments for key regulations including the Service Organization Control Type 2 (SOC 2), Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI), Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and more!

The company has partnered with Strattmont Group to deliver these services. CISO at Strattmont, Darren Knopp, shared his excitement for the partnership, stating: "We are thrilled to announce our partnership with White Rock Cybersecurity, a company whose values and commitment to excellence resonate deeply with our organization. This collaboration marks a significant milestone in our mission to enhance compliance assessments and cybersecurity solutions. Together, we are poised to increase value for our clients by expanding our services and delivering unparalleled expertise in the industry."

White Rock Consulting through Strattmont Group will offer the following compliance assessment services to customers:

• SOC 2 Readiness

• PCI Readiness

• CMMC Readiness

• NIST

• HIPAA

• Cyber Insurance

• CJIS

• And more!

Compliance assessments are designed to identify and mitigate risks before they become serious, improve organizations’ overall security and operational efficiency, and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.

Through the partnership with Strattmont Group, White Rock Cybersecurity can help its current clients identify gaps in their organization’s security programs, help avoid penalties, and enhance preparedness for the audits. By conducting security and compliance assessments, organizations can maintain a strong security posture, stay compliant with mandatory and relevant regulations, and be well-prepared for formal audits.

“This partnership with Strattmont Group represents a significant achievement in White Rock’s history,” said James Range, founder and CEO of White Rock Cybersecurity. “Darren and the Strattmont Group have been a client of ours for 10 years, so we’re excited to be working together as partners. Through this collaboration, we’re now able to offer our customers the full lifecycle of cybersecurity services from assessments to the products we deliver to protect organizations across the country. We’re looking forward to helping more customers through White Rock Consulting.”

For more information about White Rock Consulting, check out our product page or contact us for more information.

The State of Ransomware with Halcyon

Interested in learning more about ransomware and how it could impact your organization?

Join us for a webinar with White Rock's CTO, Ron Brown, and Halcyon's Global Security & Risk Executive, Ben Carr, as they highlight White Rock's latest offering: Halcyon Ransomware Protection.

The two will discuss preventing and recovering from ransomware attacks automatically with Halcyon. Halcyon is the only anti-ransomware and data resiliency platform with built-in key capture and decryption, automated recovery, and data exfiltration prevention to reduce your ransomware downtime to zero. 

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Watch the On-Demand Webinar with Halcyon Now.

Interested in learning more about these tools? Contact an expert today.

White Rock Cybersecurity Surpasses 50% Growth Milestone for Fifth Time and Continues to Expand Nationally in 2023, Marking 10 Years of Success

Leader in cybersecurity and IT solutions reinforces customer-first strategy by expanding its community of best-in-class partners to continue to defend against evolving threats

DALLAS – February 14, 2023 – White Rock Cybersecurity, a premier information technology and network security solutions provider, announced today that it reached 51% growth in 2023 – driven by an increase in customers, partners, and employees across the country.

2023 was a special year for White Rock, as the company celebrated its 10-year anniversary. Since 2013, White Rock has built up a community of best-in-class cybersecurity and technology partners; and the company continues to invest in its partnerships to offer strategic value and solve complex challenges of the modern day threat landscape.

In response to the needs of its customers, White Rock directed its focus to more cloud-based solutions offerings, including endpoint detection and response (EDR), managed detection and response (MDR), and business email compromise.

The company also expanded its presence to support the needs of its growing number of national customers by adding to its business development organization with new hires in Oregon, Massachusetts, Texas, and California. The company kicked off its new presence in each region with customer events including sporting events, concerts, and networking events. To round out the year, White Rock received Regional Partner of the Year recognition from SentinelOne and was invited to be a part of the Partner Advisory board for three leading cybersecurity vendors. White Rock was also accepted into the AWS partnership program, enabling White Rock customers to take advantage of the benefits of AWS’s Private Offer Program.

“Looking back at 2023, I’m incredibly proud of how far this company has come and the strong community of partners, employees, and customers we’ve built over the last 10 years,” said James Range, founder and CEO of White Rock Cybersecurity. “Over the last year, we signed on additional top-tier cybersecurity and IT vendors, hosted virtual and in-person events across the country, and volunteered our time at local and national organizations to continue to build the unique spirit we foster at White Rock. But we still have some surprises up our sleeve for 2024, so we look forward to offering new capabilities to our customers to come in the new year.”

About White Rock Cybersecurity
White Rock Cybersecurity is a premier solutions provider specializing in information technology and network security. White Rock's comprehensive suite of IT and network security solutions defend enterprises from existing and emerging security threats, with leading edge, best-in-class products and services for the most advanced protection. For more information, visit wrsecure.com or check us out on LinkedIn, Facebook, and X.

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Press Contact: 

Abigail Rappoport

White Rock Cybersecurity

whiterock@threeringsinc.com

Five Steps to Achieving Zero Trust

Cybercrime has been on the rise for decades but has escalated in recent years. According to Check Point Research, in 2022, “global cyberattacks increased by 38%” and were driven by breaches in collaboration tools meant to target those working from home or taking online classes.

A quick review of the last few years helps us understand why this is the case. In the post-pandemic world, people are doing everything online, organizations are trying to figure out how to secure a hybrid workforce, and they’re also having a hard time hiring tech roles, particularly in cybersecurity – all of which creates a perfect storm of opportunity for hackers, data breaches, and other cybercrimes to occur.

Organizations need to take cyber incidents seriously – not only because it’s the right thing to do, but also because these attacks can cause significant damage to the business through a loss of customers, tarnished reputation, or hit to the bottom line. In fact, according to the 2022 IBM Cost of a Data Breach report fielded by Ponemon Research, the average cost of a data breach has increased by 2.6% to a “record high of US$4.35 million.”

The unprecedented threat landscape is throwing new challenges at companies across industries, including a rising rate of cyber risks and increasing costs associated with data breaches. In this reality, organizations need to adapt their cybersecurity strategies to fight back – and many are turning to the concept of “Zero Trust” to do so.

Zero Trust explained

Originally coined by Forrester Research, the term Zero Trust assumes that everyone and everything on the network is not to be trusted (as opposed to previous systems that did the opposite – trusting users and looking for deviations from trusted behavior).

For example, an organization that strives for Zero Trust likely has implemented multiple layers of security – permissions, password-protected pages, encryption, etc. – to increase confidence that hackers won’t be able to threaten their organization. Creating this type of Zero Trust architecture is a challenge, but it is doable. And it pays off. According to the same IBM report referenced earlier, companies with Zero Trust strategies pay 23% less for data breaches compared to those that have not implemented such an architecture.

How to achieve Zero Trust

To achieve Zero Trust and implement a Zero Trust architecture, it’s important to start by understanding one basic principle: Trust no one and nothing. By following this principle, you’ll be able to put the right protocols in place that protect your most valuable assets and align with this concept.

For instance, let’s say you work for a financial management company. It’s highly likely that customer data is something you and your company prioritize protecting. Your IT team might then implement a virtual private network (VPN) to access customer data. This adds multiple layers of security, keeping hackers out and only allowing those in with the right permissions.

But this is only one example. Following, we’ve outlined a few steps you can take to go down the road to Zero Trust:

1. Identify your priority assets. Start by answering the important questions: What systems and data would your company classify as its “crown jewels”? What, if hacked, would cause the most damage to your organization? What would cost the company the most money? Once you’ve answered these questions, prioritize the protection of the assets you’ve identified. 

2. Take stock of your users. Just as it’s important to identify your priority assets, you’ll also want to determine how many end users and administrators are at your company. Once realized, you’ll need to establish how they obtain access to your network and systems, and what their permissions are. There are a few different verification processes to consider, including multi-factor authentication, Privileged Access Management (PAM), and biometrics.

3. Follow the path of “least-privileged access.” In this concept, IT teams should only give end users the absolute minimum privilege they need to do their job successfully. This allows management to control the amount of access each user has and gives them visibility into each account and its permissions. It also becomes much easier for IT to monitor for risks and protect valuable assets.

4. Get employees on board. It’s important to remember that Zero Trust is a new and complex concept that requires a true mindset shift to achieve. Employees are your first line of defense, so you need to bring them along for the journey to Zero Trust. This means educating them on why your organization has shifted from a traditional security perspective to Zero Trust and how their roles, permissions, etc. could be affected by this change, and training them on any new security protocols.

5. Be strategic in mitigating cyber risk. Don’t just throw any verification process or authentication tools at your security program and hope they stick; otherwise, you’ll end up with a patchwork environment of disparate security tools that all work in isolation. A better strategy is to focus on how new and existing tools can work together to mitigate your company’s greatest areas of risk. Taking a more holistic and integrated approach to security will yield better results – both in terms of risk mitigation and ROI. And this is why identifying your most vital assets is so important – because then you can put the right solutions in place that will actually protect them.

White Rock Cybersecurity can help you achieve Zero Trust

Of course, Zero Trust is only as effective as your overall security program. So, you’ll want to take the time to understand where your program stands and how you can use existing solutions to the fullest before adding layers of protection or replacing existing tools.

If you’re interested in learning more about White Rock’s offerings and how we can help you achieve Zero Trust, reach out to us at salesinfo@wrsecure.com. #AchieveZeroTrust

Okta: The Blend Between Security and Usability

Welcome to Part II of our workshop series with Okta!

We recently hosted a workshop with Austin Dunn from Okta to highlight the benefits of Okta’s Lifecycle Management solution and how it can help maintain one source of truth for your HR applications to provision and deprovision your users from apps such as ADP, Paycor, Paycom, Workday, UKG, and more.

Whether you’re interested in up-leveling your company’s cybersecurity strategy or you’d like to learn more about different security tools and solutions, our cybersecurity workshop series is the best place to start.

If you missed our first session with SentinelOne, you can watch the recording here.

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Watch the On-Demand Webinar with Okta Now.

Interested in learning more about these tools? Contact an expert today.

SentinelOne: Getting Started with SentinelOne's Autonomous XDR

Welcome to our workshop series with SentinelOne!

With the number and amount of threats that exist today, it’s become harder to track them live and stop attacks from wreaking havoc on your business.

We were recently joined by Brandon Harmon from SentinelOne to learn more about SentinelOne’s XDR Platform and how it can stop threats in real-time at machine speed and automate response actions through meaningful best of breed XDR integrations.

Brandon shows you how easy it is to enable autonomous real-time remediation and response while highlighting several automated XDR responses from solutions such as Okta, Azure AD, and Mimecast.

Watch the On-Demand Webinar Now.

Interested in learning more about these tools? Contact an expert today.