Ignyte Assurance Platform: Bridging Cyber Assurance Gap with Transformative Risk Management Engine

Recent cyber security meltdowns in some of the leading sectors of the world have led to a higher demand for security requirements. It has become more expensive and resource intensive to protect financial assets like payment card data and personal health information. This scenario has therefore developed an innate need for a higher level of risk management. In terms of regulatory compliance, the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) has placed new cybersecurity requirements on all covered financial institutions and Europe’s legislation for General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has increased data governance regulation on a global level.

Currently, as daily threats are drastically increasing, cyber regulations are also becoming more complex. In addition to this situation, there is a scarcity of security teams who have the experience to combat advanced cyber-attacks. And the regulatory compliance has also become an essential aspect in the risk management process. The Ignyte Assurance Platform™ was built to manage such complex compliance standards like PCI-DSS. It was started in 2012 as a services firm named “MAFAZO” to address the increasing flaws in cybersecurity. From its very early stage of foundation, MAFAZO established strategic relationships with the U.S Department of Defense Agencies. Similarly, it has partnered with companies across the US in the commercial sector to help them develop and implement best practices related to security, data governance, risk, and compliance.

Transformation from MAFAZO to Ignyte

The partnership with defense agencies enabled MAFAZO to largely focus on defense. And as the company grew, it felt the need for a system to enable its clients to become more self-sufficient in gathering and managing their security environment. Therefore, MAFAZO rocketed ahead to create a platform to assist with data collection, analysis, and streamlining processes across multiple security at once and changed its name as Ignyte Assurance Platform^TM. Today, it is also working closely with several prestigious healthcare institutions such as Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Allina Health Network, Premier Health and many others in the sector. It is enabling them to effectively manage and protect patient health records and comply with HIPAA standards. In April 2018, Ignyte started providing its risk management solutions and integrated risk management solutions which simplify compliance across regulations, standards, and guidelines across organizations. Currently, large numbers of clients are adopting the Ignyte platform due its comprehensive benefits.

Benefiting Clients with the Provision of Ongoing Assurance to their Management

Ignyte helps clients in adopting the Ignyte platform to provide ongoing assurance to their organizational management. Presently, its clients are shifting from manual processes, legacy technology, and systems designed for general compliance to internet scale cyber security issues. To match their changing inclination in risk management, Ignyte’s unique datamodel offers up to 10M datapoints. Moreover, it has integrated this datamodel with natural language processes for a much faster regulatory analysis and intent mapping between several regulations. Similarly, Ignyte uses the same technology to map intent down to potential exposures and risks for organizations. The company is significantly doing these tasks at a very large scale with more speeds as compared to age-old legacy platforms.

Ignyte’s GRC and integrated risk management automation specially developed for up and coming auditors, legal officers, and security officers helps them to set standards on usability and remove barriers to adopt enterprise wide business process automation risk and compliance software. Today’s organizations are relying on legacy platforms with hidden software development costs. Ignyte helps such organizations to see value fast, improve their GRC experience, and make smarter business decisions. It simply serves the Chief Security Officers, Legal Officers and Risk Officers by leveraging its expertise and service enabled platform. Additionally, the team of Ignyte and its CEO works closely with regulatory bodies and auditors to help their clients effectively manage risks.

CEO, Developing Strategy and Directing the Company towards Success

Max Aulakh, the CEO of Ignyte Assurance Platform strives to develop a good company culture at Ignyte and focuses on building strong industry partnerships externally. While sharing his thoughts about his current work and responsibilities, Max says, “I love what I do, but I do miss getting my hands dirty and doing actual risk management work. It is why I started this company.” He says that because he actually trained and excelled in the United States Air Force. Thereafter, he drove the Information Assurance (IA) programs for US department of Defense (DoD). As the Senior Consultant for a major Defense contracting firm, Max lead a team of consultants that helped datacenters successfully pass Air Force Level Security audits for HIPAA, SOX & FISMA Regulatory requirements. Today, Max leads Ignyte, with his world-class team of cyber assurance and software professionals.

Ignyte’s Differentiator:  Integrated Risk Management vs GRC

Making the shift from Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) to Integrated Risk Management (IRM).  Just one more way that Ignyte can helps their client’s “future proof” their businesses is it’s thought leadership and best practice guidance in the industry regarding IRM adoption.  IRM goes beyond the traditional, compliance-driven GRC technology solutions to provide actionable insights that are aligned with business strategies, not just regulatory mandates.

IRM Eliminates Silos & Promotes a Security-Focused Culture – In a digital world where every employee operates a computer, cyber security and compliance are now everyone’s responsibility, from the C-suite down to the reception desk, and even extending to third-party vendors. IRM fosters a top-down, security-focused and risk management-based culture throughout the organization, eliminating silos and enabling organizations to identify situations where a risk factor in one area affects other areas.

IRM Improves Effectiveness & Cuts Costs – IRM identifies redundancies and inefficiencies in organizational GRC and cyber security, allowing organizations to eliminate processes that add no value, allocate funds and human resources more effectively, improve GRC and cyber security functions on all levels, and free up employees to work on projects that further the organization’s goals.

IRM Uncovers Opportunities – Risk isn’t always negative; businesses need to take risks to grow. By integrating risk management into overall organizational strategy, IRM treats risk management as a business driver, not a business cost. It allows organizations to see how risk management, compliance, and data security can further their business goals and uncovers opportunities to take calculated risks.

Healthcare Case Study:  The Ignyte Assurance Platform Transforms the Compliance Management Process

The Ignyte Assurance Platform enables Healthcare systems to more easily and efficiently manage the growing amount of regulatory compliance requirements they are mandated with each year.

Security governance teams in the healthcare sector are continually challenged to find creative ways to improve the overall security posture without disrupting the culture of learning and discovery.

Part of ensuring this security posture are regular audits mandated by NIH and other regulatory bodies.  These hospitals and healthcare systems have regulatory compliance requirements that are manually tracked and stored in disparate locations. Companies end up building custom labor-intensive audits from scratch or cut and pasted content from previous versions. Additionally, with the regulations continually being updated, they need a reliable method to keep current on the changes and adjust policies and processes to meet new requirements.

Ignyte’s customers use the platform to automate the workflow across the multiple frameworks they were once attempting to manually manage. Ignyte also provides the automated control mappings they need to stay current on critical, new regulatory requirements.  In just a few months, client’s will begin to streamline their internal processes, map critical applications, and manage the integration of controls across multiple security frameworks. They now have a central repository for storing evidence. Each piece of evidence is now tied to a control and could be easily produced for auditors on demand.

The platform allows you to create a high-level system that encompasses your entire environment. It can connect to any environment that embraces that.”, says Max.

Gearing up with Continuous and Dedicated Teamwork

Max believes that employees are the lifeblood of a company. He adds that his R&D team has worked tirelessly for the last two years to build out Ignyte platform which will serve next-generation leaders of modern organizations. Meanwhile, their sales and marketing teams have been continuously strategizing on refining Ignyte key message to the market and value delivery to the clients. According to Max, the biggest challenge for Ignyte is to enable its channel partners to succeed in their GRC and Integrated Risk Management. Sharing his upcoming plans, Max said, “GRC and Intergrated Risk Management is a complex space and requires many different types of expertise. We plan on hiring more folks this year to help overcome some of these challenges.” Similarly, the CEO plans to hire anyone who has a passion to work within integrated risk management regardless of their age and generation as it’s the outdated factor in the cyber risk management industry.