Compliance

 

Exciting News!

We are thrilled to announce that Digital Edge has achieved the prestigious SOC 2 certification! This milestone underscores our unwavering commitment to the highest standards of cybersecurity, IT compliance, and service excellence.

Why SOC 2 Matters: SOC 2 (Service Organization Control 2) certification is a rigorous standard that evaluates the effectiveness of an organization's controls related to security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy of customer data. Achieving this certification demonstrates our dedication to maintaining robust data security and providing our clients with the utmost confidence in our services.

What This Means for Our Clients: With our SOC 2 certification, clients can rest assured that Digital Edge operates with the highest level of integrity and security. Our comprehensive NOC/SOC services are now backed by this significant endorsement, ensuring that we meet and exceed industry standards for protecting sensitive information and delivering reliable IT compliance solutions.

Thank You! This accomplishment would not have been possible without the hard work and dedication of our incredible team. Your relentless pursuit of excellence and commitment to best practices have made this achievement a reality.

Join Us on Our Journey: Stay tuned as we continue to innovate and elevate our services, always with the goal of providing top-tier cybersecurity and IT compliance solutions. Thank you to our clients, partners, and supporters for your trust and confidence in Digital Edge.

 
 

I am happy to announce that Digital Edge has successfully completed its SOC 2 Type II Audit! The team worked hard to collect and submit all the evidence to our auditors at Hogan Taylor who did a great job in quickly responding to and meeting our needs. A great job all around.
 

Basic security tools, such as firewalls, antivirus software (AV), and encryption tools, while essential, often lack the sophistication needed to combat evolving cyber threats effectively.

As the AI revolution gains momentum, the global focus on controlling its impact intensifies. In the realm of privacy and cybersecurity, there's a growing concern about the trajectory of AI and our responsibilities within it.

Digital Edge’s NYS DFS 500 Financial Services Security and Compliance Framework includes our DFS Reference Architecture which specifically guides customers in their AWS deployments and addresses the new requirements that have become a part of the NYS DFS 500 Law. 

 

The current cybersecurity laws and regulations landscape is complex and burdensome. Public cloud providers are trying to help automate and offload the weight of program implementation but there is still a long way to go.
New York State DFS introduced its 23 NYCRR 500 regulation that requires implementation of cybersecurity requirements for all covered entities.
 
Digital Edge’s team, backed by our legal, cybersecurity and heavy AWS expertise has analyzed DFS requirements and possible AWS implementation automation suggestions.
 
Download the DFS 500 PDF with highlights and comments that include the joint work of our team.

The California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), slotted to go into effect January 1, 2023 has had a recent change.  The California Privacy Protection Agency Executive Director, Askan Solitani, recently announced in a 12/16 board meeting that release of the final rules of the CPRA will be pushed back to April, 2023, leaving a 3 month gap between the regulations effective date and publication of it's rule requirements.

Does your company do any business with California residents or businesses? Do you have even one employee in California? Do you generate $25 million or more in gross revenue?  Are you a service provider or contractor for a California based company that is subject to the GDPR?

If so, you should know by now that in a mere 2 ½ months the “California Privacy Rights Act” (CPRA) enforcement will begin, and with it some much-expanded privacy rights of California residents, and some much-expanded privacy obligations for businesses. 

Background:

The CPRA is the most robust consumer privacy law in the United States. In November 2020, California voters approved the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020, otherwise known as the CPRA. This is an amendment to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) that voters approved in 2018. 

The CPRA has now modified, expanded, and clarified privacy rights for California residents, and it takes inspiration from the EU’s GDPR policy in a variety of ways. For instance, the CPRA creates a new enforcement agency. Previously the CCPA was enforced by the California Office of the Attorney General. However, in the EU, GDPR is enforced by data protection authorities –– and now, California has implemented one, too: the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA). 

Purpose:

CPRA’s purpose is to redefine and expand the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in order to strengthen the rights of residents of California. It provides consumers greater opportunity to opt out and requires deliberate data privacy management from businesses.

California has made it clear that they are serious. These rights can and will be enforced by private citizens, all California district attorneys, and the newly created “California Privacy Protection Agency” mentioned above and created solely to enforce privacy laws.

What are these rights?

The CPRA expands and amends the previous California privacy laws. Taken together they consist of the following bundle of privacy rights:

1. Right to Access personal information.
2. Right to Delete personal information.
3. Right to Correct personal information.
4. Right to Object to Selling personal information.
5. Right to Opt-Out of behavioral profiling and automated decision making.
6. Right to Object to the Use of Sensitive Information.
7. Right to Data Portability.

But that’s not all:

1. Purpose Limitation – Personal information can only be used for the purpose it was originally collected.
2. Children’s Data – Fines are now tripled for violating the privacy rights of children under 16.
3. Storage Limitation – Personal information must be destroyed once it has been used for its purpose at collection.
4. *Reasonable Cybersecurity Controls – Security controls must be commensurate with the sensitivity of the data you are protecting. This part by itself is just as big an undertaking as complying with the rest of the CPRA.

What are the penalties? 

$2,000 per offense for mistakes, $2,500 per offense for negligent mistakes, and $7,500 per offense for intentional offenses.

Please be aware – These offenses are accumulative and every California resident impacted by the same event will constitute a separate offence.

This can mean fines well into the millions of dollars

So far, under the CCPA (the current main California Privacy law) there has been numerous private settlements reaching into the millions of dollars including a recent one for $10 million - and just this past August Sephora was fined $1.2 million by the California Attorney General.

Becoming compliant with the CPRA is not an easy task, you will need to find out where every bit of personal data comes from and how it is handled. Then you will need to figure out how to actually comply with the law which will take policies and procedures and technical implementations. We at Digital Edge are experts in compliance and can assist you in developing a strategy and plan to ensure your business is protected and align with the January 2023 deadlines.

For more information contact sales@digitaledge.net

 

Digital Edge's Compliance team has noticed that organizations and IT/compliance groups lack understanding of mandates for scheduled reviews and audits.

Each cybersecurity standard or framework has its own unique requirements. This article provides information on minimal required reviews and audits by PCI standard.