Identify and Manage Risks with Consistent Custom Assessments

PlexTrac Can Do That

As we’ve covered in previous posts, continuous assessment is an important model to move toward for a robust cybersecurity program. Gaining a real-time view of security posture through regular assessment cycles requires customization, planning, communication, and lots of reporting.

In other words, assessment—whether audits, vulnerability assessments, or pen tests—is the foundation of a security program. The foundation of thorough, consistent, regular assessments will drive security forward on all levels of an organization.

It’s all about knowledge. In cybersecurity, what you don’t know will most certainly hurt you. Continuous assessment supplies the knowledge to gain control of your security posture; however, conducting and tracking all these assessments needs streamlining in most organizations.

Custom Assessments with Flexible Questionnaires

Every organization is different as are their cybersecurity programs. Some are large well-funded, in-house operations while others outsource a number of elements of their process. Being able to adapt assessment strategy and execution to the specific needs of the organization is essential but often time consuming requiring the creation of protocol, templates, and questionnaires.

What cybersecurity professionals doing regular assessments, whether as part of an in-house team or as an external contractor, need are ways to simplify but still have the customization options. PlexTrac can do that…

The PlexTrac Assessments Module supports customizable assessment planning and execution with a questionnaire engine that gives you ultimate flexibility in the assessment questionnaires you create. Questionnaires may include up to 1,000 questions and support fully customizable radio buttons,  multiple choice and free response questions.

Rapid Reporting without the Spreadsheets

Assessments are pointless unless the information gathered is useable by everyone who needs it. Basically, reporting out on assessments shouldn’t be an afterthought but rather an integral part of the assessments themselves.

Cybersecurity assessors can find themselves drowning in spreadsheets as they attempt to track, record, and manage the data. Systems based on spreadsheets are typically unwieldy and lack integration with assessment frameworks unless someone has taken the time to build in frameworks by hand.

The work of pulling data from multiple sources and entering it into cumbersome spreadsheets that then have to be again reworked into reports that are user friendly for various audiences is a major drag on people who could be using their skills on higher level tasks. Assessors need a place to move seamlessly from assessment to report. PlexTrac can do that…

The Assessments Module can pre-populate commonly seen deficiencies, recommendations and authoritative references into your framework-based risk assessments. Don’t worry, you can even mask this reference data until you’ve tailored it to your customers’ environments. The platform allows you to enrich responses with supporting documentation while you work, rather than having to find and insert everything later. With PlexTrac Assessments, you can perform your assessment in an easy-to-navigate environment built for your workflow—not a spreadsheet.

No More Emails with Sensitive Data

How assessments are conducted and communicated amongst all constituents can be another area of inefficiency and even vulnerability for some teams. Jumping between the different programs, processes, and permissions used by clients, custumers, and vendors can be a significant challenge. Not only do these things seldom integrate, the various parties are usually left to communicate about them via insecure and inefficient channels like email.

Sending pieces for evaluation back and forth, not to mention communicating about the results after an assessment through email is a sticking point on a number of levels. What if assessments could be planned and tracked and reported in a platform accessible to all constituents? PlexTrac can do that…

With PlexTrac’s Assessment Module, you’ll discover risks in clients, customers, and vendors with assessments conducted directly in the secure platform. PlexTrac Assessments eliminates the hassle and concern of email transmission of sensitive documentation. Because they can work directly in the platform, your respondents will have an intuitive interface that eases the burden of assessment completions.

PlexTrac Can Do That

The Assessments Module is just one of the functionalities of PlexTrac that is changing the way cybersecurity professions get the real work done. To learn more about how PlexTrac can streamline cybersecurity operations for programs of any size, drop us a line and we’ll send you a quick reference guide outlining all the available PlexTrac features.