Compliance Assessment Services
Gap Analysis and Remediation
With 35 years in IT, ScienceSoft helps enterprises and software vendors stay compliant with major cybersecurity and quality assurance standards.
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Compliance assessment helps reveal and close gaps in a company's policies, procedures, software, and IT infrastructure that fall under industry-specific or commonly applicable regulations. Compliance assessment services may include:
- Reviewing security and quality assurance policies and procedures.
- Security testing of software and IT networks.
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Evaluating employees' knowledge of applicable standards and regulations.
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Remediation guidance and practical aid to fix detected gaps.
Standards We Work With and Companies We Serve
ScienceSoft helps enterprises in 30+ industries check and improve their compliance with mandatory and voluntary regulations and standards. To software vendors, we offer the evaluation of their products, development processes, and IT environments against quality and cybersecurity compliance standards.
ISO 9001 (voluntary)
For software product companies and other IT businesses aiming to establish mature quality management systems.
ISO 27001 (voluntary)
For companies that need to protect sensitive data they collect, store, process, or transmit, including:
- IT companies.
- Businesses in the financial industry.
- Government agencies.
- Telecom service providers, etc.
ISO 13485:2016 (voluntary)
For companies interested in establishing quality management systems for designing, producing, installing, and servicing medical devices:
- Medical device manufacturers.
- Healthcare software vendors.
HIPAA (mandatory)
For companies involved in storing, processing, or transmitting personal health information:
- Healthcare providers.
- Healthcare companies’ business associates.
- Medical device manufacturers.
- Healthcare software vendors.
PCI DSS (mandatory)
For businesses accepting payment cards of American Express, Discover, JCB, MasterCard, and Visa or directly involved in the processing, storage, or transmission of cardholder data:
- Merchants.
- Service providers.
PCI Software Security Framework (voluntary)
For software product companies delivering payment solutions.
GDPR (mandatory)
For companies involved in collecting, storing, processing, and transmitting the personal data of EU residents:
- Any entity dealing with EU residents' data in the course of its business activities.
- Software vendors, delivering software that will operate with EU residents’ data.
NIST Security Framework (mandatory)
For US federal agencies and their contractors:
- Businesses that provide services to federal agencies.
- Vendors developing software products for federal agencies.
NYDFS Cybersecurity Regulation (mandatory)
For all the DFS-regulated entities operating in New York state and their third-party service providers.
- Banking institutions.
- Insurance providers.
- Other financial services companies.
SOC 2 (voluntary)
For any service providers that want to ensure and prove their customers’ data security, including:
- Cloud services providers.
- SaaS companies.
- Managed IT services providers
- Financial services companies.
- Government agencies, etc.
From our experience, we can say that businesses that keep up with quality assurance and cybersecurity standards win over their competitors. Here are a few reasons why:
- It helps them raise the efficiency and optimize the costs of their quality and IT security management.
- They can easier get customers' trust as a secure and ever-improving business.
- They are able to deliver top-level software that meets the needs of the growing privacy-conscious market.
Compliance Assessment Process
1
Outlining compliance scope
- Defining mandatory standards and voluntary standards that will bring extra benefits to the business. E.g., ISO 27001 certification is optional, while this compliance helps establish efficient security management processes that will contribute to protecting the company against breaches and associated reputational damage.
- Outlining the compliance requirements applicable to the company's business or software specifics.
- Identifying the components of the IT environment and the staff members that the compliance requirements apply to.
2
Identifying compliance gaps
- Reviewing the documented security/quality management policies and procedures and evaluate how well they are integrated into routine business activities.
- Performing vulnerability assessment and penetration testing of applications and IT infrastructure, or software architecture and source code review.
- Interviewing the staff members and imitating social engineering attacks to see if the employees know and strictly follow security rules and compliance requirements.
3
Compliance gap analysis
- Defining the causes and the potential consequences of the detected compliance gaps.
- Prioritizing the detected compliance gaps by their criticality.
4
Developing a remediation plan to achieve compliance
- Advising on how to eliminate the revealed gaps in policies and procedures.
- Recommendations for promoting compliance awareness of the staff.
- Suggesting corrective measures to fix vulnerabilities in software and IT infrastructure.
5
Remediating the detected compliance gaps
ScienceSoft brings its decades-long experience in cybersecurity, software development, and IT consulting to perform any required remediation activities. They may include:
For all companies
- Designing a secure network architecture.
- Installing and configuring firewalls, anti-malware, IDS/IPS.
- Ensuring email security.
- Deploying a SIEM solution to monitor user activity within the network.
- Building a quality management system.
Specific for software vendors
- Installing and configuring security components in the development infrastructure.
- Designing secure and efficient software architecture.
- Implementing software features required by the applicable standards.
Compliance Assessment Service Deliverables
ScienceSoft’s compliance team prepares a series of reports to offer a clear insight into the assessment process and detected compliance gaps. To address them, we deliver a remediation roadmap. Depending on a specific project, we can provide:
Assessment deliverables
- Compliance scope report (contains the inventory of data, software, and network components subject to compliance).
- Compliance risk report.
- Report on the existing gaps in the IT policies and procedures.
- Report on the staff’s compliance awareness.
- Report on the state of compliance training materials.
- Network configuration diagrams.
- Software architecture and source code review reports.
- Penetration testing and VA reports describing and prioritizing the vulnerabilities that lead to non-compliance.
Recommendation deliverables
- Recommendations on scope reduction: limiting the number of IT assets or employees with access to sensitive data, etc.
- Compliance risk mitigation plan.
- Recommendations on improving policies and procedures.
- Secure network architecture design.
- Recommendations on software features required by applicable standards.
- Recommendations on the training process and materials to raise the staff’s compliance awareness.
- Recommendations on corrective measures needed to remediate the revealed vulnerabilities.
Why Businesses Choose Compliance Services by ScienceSoft
Experience and expertise
- In IT since 1989, a solid portfolio of 3,600+ successfully completed projects.
- 21 years in information security services.
- A competent multiskilled team comprising Certified Ethical Hackers, compliance consultants, and Certified Internal Auditors for ISO 9001, ISO 13485, and ISO 27001.
Dedication to quality
- ISO 9001-certified mature quality management system that guarantees the tangible value of our services, predictable results, and cost optimization that doesn't happen at the expense of quality.
- ISO 27001-certified security management based on field-tested knowledge and comprehensive policies.
Recognized business excellence
- Recognized as Top Penetration Testing Company by Clutch.
- Featured in the IAOP Global Outsourcing 100 list for three consecutive years.
- ScienceSoft is a 3-Year Champion in The Americas’ Fastest-Growing Companies Rating by the Financial Times.
Trusted by famous brands
What Our Customers Appreciate
During our cooperation, ScienceSoft proved to have vast expertise in Healthcare and Life Science industries. They bring top quality talents and deep knowledge of IT technologies and approaches in accordance with ISO13485 and IEC62304 standards. I would also like to point out that ScienceSoft's team demonstrated a great engineering culture, proactive approach in work, and the communication was easy and clear.
ScienceSoft provided us with the proper documentation agreed upon during the initial stages. They had quick turnaround times for PEN Testing, less than 2 weeks.
We were impressed by the smooth communication, attention to our requests, and the team's expertise in web security. We really liked how comprehensive but to-the-point the reports were. ScienceSoft's experts were also eager to share their knowledge and readily answered our questions, so we managed to handle the detected issues in no time.
Compliance Assessment Challenges We Handle
Challenge #1
It may be hard to find a compliance assessment vendor well-versed in several standards applying to a specific industry or software type.
Challenge #2
A high-level assessment of compliance gaps is just one little step — it is crucial to competently remediate them.
Compliance Assessment Tools Our Team Relies On
Along with manual techniques that we apply to detect compliance gaps, we choose tried-and-true tools to explore weaknesses in software and IT infrastructure.
Compliance Assessment vs. Risk Assessment: Key Differences
Compliance assessment
- Checks if the rules prescribed by certain standards and regulations are followed.
- A focused approach: analyzes specific aspects, for example, cardholder data protection or medical device quality management.
- The tactical level: evaluates specific measures to avoid threats that compromise the quality and security of IT products and operations.
Risk assessment
- Identifies and analyzes threats and the damage they can do to IT assets and the business.
- A comprehensive approach: tries to anticipate any possible risks, including all kinds of compliance breaches.
- The strategic level: serves to define a general action plan to manage the risks that a company faces.
ScienceSoft as a Compliance Assessment Vendor: Success Stories
Quality Assessment and HIPAA Compliance Evaluation for a US Healthcare Provider
To check if the patient portal complies with the HIPAA Security Rule, ScienceSoft conducted vulnerability scanning, malware detection, penetration testing, and source code review.
ISO 27001 Pre-Audit for an International Fintech Company
ScienceSoft's security consultants performed compliance gap analysis of the information security management system for a B2C fintech company. ScienceSoft's detailed reports and consultations on gap remediation helped the Customer fully prepare for ISO 27001 audit.
Pentesting of a Web Platform and Mobile Apps for a Remote Patient Monitoring Vendor
ScienceSoft conducted gray box penetration testing of an RPM platform and corresponding iOS and Android apps. Our experts advised on the necessary corrective measures to ensure that patients' sensitive data is protected as required by HITRUST CSF and HIPAA.
Web Application and Network Penetration Testing for a US Contract Services Company
To help the Customer prepare for PCI DSS and SOC 2 compliance audits, ScienceSoft performed gray box penetration testing of 4 web applications, the external network perimeter, and the internal network, and simulated phishing attacks at 70 employees.
Vulnerability Assessment Focusing on PCI DSS for a US Mobile Services Provider
ScienceSoft revealed over 300 security issues in the Customer's internal IT infrastructure, including the critical ones that could endanger the cardholder data. After fixing these vulnerabilities, the Customer successfully passed PCI DSS validation.
Penetration Testing for an Enterprise Resource Planning Platform
To ensure that the ERP platform meets PCI DSS and NYDFS cybersecurity requirements, ScienceSoft tested its newly added components: a web application, an API (with 100 endpoints), and 5 public IPs and provided guidance on vulnerability remediation.
Pentesting for Apifonica to Enhance Web Applications and IT Network Security
ScienceSoft conducted black, white, and gray box pentesting of the IT network and web apps, as well as an email phishing campaign for a vendor delivering smart communication solutions. As a result, the Customer was able to enhance its IT security posture and ensure its clients' data protection as required by GDPR and ISO 27001.
We Step In Where You Need Us: Service Options We Offer
Compliance assessment
- One-time or continuous evaluation of how well your company or your software meets applicable compliance requirements.
- Compliance gap analysis and remediation advice.
Compliance advisory services
- Designing efficient quality and security management measures.
- Planning software development in line with applicable compliance requirements.
- Investigating and helping report compliance breaches.
Full compliance support
- Compliance gap analysis by seasoned compliance consultants.
- Gap remediation by experienced cybersecurity engineers and software developers.
- Actionable advice on compliance management strategy.
Non-Compliance Is Not Just Careless, It's Costly
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$14.8M is the average cost of non-compliance due to business disruption, productivity loss fines, and other factors (GlobalScape) |
€1.6B was the record amount of fines paid in 2023 for non-compliance with GDPR (Statista) |
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