It gets worse. Tech companies are service providers that typically work with a chain of other service providers. About 40%-50% of the controls for the last SOC2 audit I ran was carved out and deferred to our service providers. (Also, there are limited applicable frameworks: SOC2, PCI, ISO-270001, HIPAA and HITRUST are common for me, but usually related to cloud services.)
Yeah, I tend to break the brains of auditors that have never dealt with startups and have been used to Fortune 500 mega-companies. What’s funnier, is that I am just a lowly security engineer. A very experienced security engineer, but a lowly one nonetheless.
Auditor: So what is your documented process for this ?
Me: Uhh, we don’t have one?
Auditor: What about when X or Y catastrophic issue happens?
Me: Anyone just pushes this button and activates that widget.
Auditor: Ok. Uh. Is that process documented?
Me: Nope. We probably do it about 2-3 times a week anyway.
Yeah we do a lot around frameworks at my current place, and previously we worked directly with customers with iso and acsc essential 8 frameworks. For us, non-compliance = revenue opportunity. That means we are financially rewarded for aligning them and encouraged to do so. On that same note I wrote up a checklist for “sysadmin best practices” aimed for driving reviews and checks and Remedial opportunities for small businesses, useful in that space. I got such an overwhelming amount of response in the msp reddit from people asking in DMs about it (not hundreds, just dozens, too many for me though). It’s quiet here in lemmy. Happy to share my updated version of course, just I think if you’re dealing in your sector it’ll look like childs play lol. But I kind of want to encourage a bit of community within professionals here. I just don’t want do spend time on it…
I feel you about the lowly experienced officer bit though. An account manager or business development manager, or even CTO won’t listen to me. I have a business degree, most of them don’t. I try to apply critical decision making in my solutions and risk advisory. But the words fall on deaf ears. I take a small but very guilty pleasure watching the very thing I warn against, happening both to clients and my employers. Especially when the prevention was trivial but all it needed was any amount of attention.
After nearly 20 years of IT and about 15 in MSP I’m so tired. I’m very much resonating with that “lowly engineer” comment.
It gets worse. Tech companies are service providers that typically work with a chain of other service providers. About 40%-50% of the controls for the last SOC2 audit I ran was carved out and deferred to our service providers. (Also, there are limited applicable frameworks: SOC2, PCI, ISO-270001, HIPAA and HITRUST are common for me, but usually related to cloud services.)
Yeah, I tend to break the brains of auditors that have never dealt with startups and have been used to Fortune 500 mega-companies. What’s funnier, is that I am just a lowly security engineer. A very experienced security engineer, but a lowly one nonetheless.
Auditor: So what is your documented process for this ?
Me: Uhh, we don’t have one?
Auditor: What about when X or Y catastrophic issue happens?
Me: Anyone just pushes this button and activates that widget.
Auditor: Ok. Uh. Is that process documented?
Me: Nope. We probably do it about 2-3 times a week anyway.
Yeah we do a lot around frameworks at my current place, and previously we worked directly with customers with iso and acsc essential 8 frameworks. For us, non-compliance = revenue opportunity. That means we are financially rewarded for aligning them and encouraged to do so. On that same note I wrote up a checklist for “sysadmin best practices” aimed for driving reviews and checks and Remedial opportunities for small businesses, useful in that space. I got such an overwhelming amount of response in the msp reddit from people asking in DMs about it (not hundreds, just dozens, too many for me though). It’s quiet here in lemmy. Happy to share my updated version of course, just I think if you’re dealing in your sector it’ll look like childs play lol. But I kind of want to encourage a bit of community within professionals here. I just don’t want do spend time on it…
I feel you about the lowly experienced officer bit though. An account manager or business development manager, or even CTO won’t listen to me. I have a business degree, most of them don’t. I try to apply critical decision making in my solutions and risk advisory. But the words fall on deaf ears. I take a small but very guilty pleasure watching the very thing I warn against, happening both to clients and my employers. Especially when the prevention was trivial but all it needed was any amount of attention.
After nearly 20 years of IT and about 15 in MSP I’m so tired. I’m very much resonating with that “lowly engineer” comment.