Governance
Our experienced team can help you build risk-based governance frameworks that enable efficient operations while maintaining strong security.
- Enhance Governance and Oversight: We help evaluate and implement solutions across people, processes, and technologies to strengthen governance and oversight within your organization.
- Align with Established Frameworks: We are experienced working with both large and small organizations to help align cybersecurity programs with best-practice frameworks and standards such as the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF) and IEC 62443, while also ensuring alignment to regulatory requirements including NERC CIP, TSA, and CMMC.
- Governance for Artificial Intelligence: The emergence of artificial intelligence presents new governance challenges. We can tailor frameworks like NIST AI 100-1 to govern the acquisition, deployment, operation, and maintenance of AI solutions within your organization.
Risk Management
As an authorized Consequence Informed Engineering practitioner, our experienced team can help embed cybersecurity into your organization's risk management strategy, directing your cybersecurity spending toward mitigating your organization’s unique risks.
- Establish Security Programs: We assist in creating security programs that identify, measure, prioritize, and mitigate your organization's unique security risks.
- Manage Third-Party and Supply Chain Risks: Recognizing that third-party and supply chain risks are serious concerns that can introduce significant risks, we help you develop and implement comprehensive risk management programs.
- Develop Effective Security Operating Frameworks: We create effective security operating frameworks that incorporate the Three Lines of Defense principles, strengthening your overall security posture.
Organizational Design
Overly complex organizational structures can hinder effective cybersecurity operations, impacting incident response and risk management. Case studies from the past decade reveal that such complexities can restrict incident response and risk management. CI-Discern leverages extensive experience across diverse critical infrastructure sectors to help optimize your organizational or departmental structures, improving risk management, incident response, and communication.
- Optimize Organizational Structures: We help you create efficient structures aligned with your business objectives.
- Enhance Risk Management: Simplifying your organizational hierarchy improves risk identification and mitigation processes.
- Improve Incident Response: Streamlined communication channels facilitate faster and more effective incident response.
Training & Awareness
Recognizing that both Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) personnel face unique cybersecurity challenges, inadequate training and awareness can significantly increase your organization's risk. We develop and deliver customized training programs tailored to your personnel’s needs, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to identify, mitigate, and respond to threats effectively. Whether you need to comply with CIP-004, other regulatory requirements, or strengthen your overall security posture, we can help. Our experienced team has a proven track record of guiding organizations from weak security postures to mature, security-aware environments.
- Assess & Design: We evaluate your current security awareness capabilities and design customized IT and OT training programs that align with industry best practices and regulatory requirements.
- Deliver & Implement: We can augment your team or work with alliance partner organizations to deliver engaging and effective training programs through various methods, including interactive modules, simulations, and workshops, providing practical application of knowledge and skills.
- Measure & Improve: We measure the effectiveness of training initiatives through assessments and feedback mechanisms, establishing ongoing programs for continuous improvement and measurable results.
Policies & Procedures
Well-defined policies and procedures are the foundation of a strong cybersecurity program. They define consistent security practice expectations, facilitate efficient operations, and preserve critical institutional knowledge. Our team will help you develop and implement effective policies and procedures, providing your organization with a strong foundation for your security program.
- Meet Industry Standards & Preserve Knowledge: Align with relevant frameworks, including NERC CIP, NIST CSF, FedRAMP, CMMC, and NIST AI, to achieve compliance, adopt best practices, and document critical processes to protect against knowledge loss from employee turnover.
- Drive Operational Efficiency: Standardize processes to eliminate redundancy, improve overall efficiency, and achieve consistent application of security controls across your organization.
- Streamline Onboarding & Improve Consistency: Provide new team members with clear documentation to accelerate their integration and productivity, while also ensuring consistent application of security practices across the organization.
Regulatory & Compliance
Our team brings diverse experiences and points of view from leaders in the public and private sector and regulatory agencies. This diversity enables us to offer unique insights that can help improve your regulatory relationships, understand the regulator’s perspective, and optimize your compliance program for maximum efficiency and effectiveness.
- Comprehensive Compliance Support: We provide experienced professionals to assist with all aspects of managing and demonstrating regulatory compliance in domains including: NERC CIP, AWIA, TSA Security, Sarbanes-Oxley (IT SOX), IEC 62443, FedRAMP, and FISMA.
- Compliance Maturity Assessments: We offer assessments that evaluate both cybersecurity program maturity and its alignment with specific compliance standards. This is particularly valuable for performance-based regulatory standards, such as TSA Security Directives, helping organizations enhance both cybersecurity program efficiency and regulatory compliance.