Security & Compliance

AWS Security & Compliance By Design

From its inception, Vertical Relevance has treated Security and Compliance as job zero. While many companies in this space tout expertise around auditing, building, and remediating infrastructure and workloads to meet compliance requirements around regulations such as NYDFS, we feel the world of Security and Compliance is much more multi-faceted than simply “meeting” requirements. Security and Compliance needs should be proactively anticipated. The differentiator that Vertical Relevance brings to the table is that due to our 20+ years of financial services expertise, we are not only more familiar with the existing requirements that companies face, but we’re also able to better anticipate and deliver on our client’s needs to keep them ahead of the curve. 

We know the disruption that the threat of non-compliance can cause for the business and further innovation. We understand the complexities of financial institutions and the difference between front, middle, and back-office operations. We understand the liability of storing large amounts of PII and more importantly the mechanisms to properly protect and utilize it to provide better customer experiences. While other companies in the space may work “for” financial services companies, we exclusively work “with” financial services companies to realize their goals. Technology, specifically AWS, is the vehicle, but the driver has been and always will be business outcomes and we’re built from the ground up to deliver on both the tech and business. 

Our Approach

While every organization we work with is unique and presents its own business challenges to solve, a commonality between most of our clients is the requirement to remain in compliance with regulators. Due to the same regulatory expectations, we commonly hear similar questions in the security and compliance space such as 

  • How can I ensure that non-compliant and unsecure infrastructure is never deployed? 
  • What security controls do I need to protect PII in my data lake? 
  • How can I make sure that business stakeholders leveraging my data are granted least privilege? 
  • With the growing number of security tools, is there a way I can consolidate all the information into a single view? 
  • How can I quantify my organization’s security posture so I can show progress to my stakeholders? 

While there are technical aspects to all those questions above, ultimately, those questions are all drivers towards business goals. We take those business goals, translate them into technical requirements, create designs and architectures, and ultimately build, deploy, test, and automate as much as we humanly can.  

Our solutions below reflect how we view reusable AWS cloud solutions and code as not only accelerators in delivery, but also as mechanisms consistency to ensure that our quality always meets our standards. 

Our Solutions

Solution Spotlight – Control Agent

Vertical Relevance’s Control Agent epitomizes the synergy of automation and integration for superior cloud security, encapsulating the journey from threat detection to remediation within a unified framework.

Solution Spotlight – Identity Foundations

While there are many different components involved with securing the cloud, a carefully architected IAM strategy is paramount. A solid IAM strategy allows engineers to develop quickly, provides key stakeholders with a comprehensive picture of the actions that can be performed by different IAM principals, and results in a more secure cloud environment overall.

Solution Spotlight – Control Foundations

Our Control Foundations Solution enables security teams to define the organization’s controls through a Policy as Code framework that can be used to continuously add, adjust controls, and deploy the changes to controls to meet compliance needs across the organization.

Module Spotlight – Control Broker Eval Engine

This is the latest example of how Vertical Relevance is a leader in the Policy as Code space. This post outlined how to operationalize PaC with a serverless Evaluation Engine as part of the broader Control Broker solution. Get in touch with us to learn more about the benefits of operationalizing the automated enforcement of security policies

Solution Spotlight – Incident Response Foundations

Vertical Relevance’s Incident Response Foundation lays the groundwork for an AWS Organization to take advantage of native AWS services for the detection and management of security incidents. It supplements the available CloudFormation resources with a custom resource that can be enhanced for the enabling of additional Security Hub supported services at the organization level.

Key Outcomes

Security at the Organizational Scale
Establish the account foundations required for enterprise success.
Preventative Controls
Utilize Policy as Code to ‘Shift Left’ enterprise security practice.
Centralized Detection and Monitoring
Empower Security Teams with the insight they need to respond to novel threats…
Automated Remediation
…while automating the enforcement of established security policy.

Thought Leadership

Module
Control Broker Eval Engine

This is the latest example of how Vertical Relevance is a leader in the Policy as Code space. This post outlined how to operationalize PaC with a serverless Evaluation Engine as part of the broader Control Broker solution. Get in touch with us to learn more about the benefits of operationalizing the automated enforcement of security policies

Offer
AWS Solution Consulting Offer – Control Broker: Financial Services Security Module

Within the financial services industry, one of the most common focuses is ensuring the security of workloads and infrastructure. A security misstep can lead to regulatory fines and a loss of customer trust. To manage risk, security teams often need to review every infrastructure stack – this is time intensive and can slow down innovation. By leveraging policy-as-code, companies can automate governance and security policies to reduce risk while allowing developers to innovate.

Offer
Achieve Compliance as Code with Vertical Relevance

Vertical Relevance and AWS has extensive experience in helping financial services institutions
achieve security and compliance on AWS. We understand the unique security, regulatory, and compliance
obligations financial services institutions face on a global scale. Vertical Relevance and AWS have collaboratively
established a framework that incorporates proven best practices for managing risk and addressing threats in cloud
environments.

Use Case
Use Case: Building PCI Compliant Cloud Infrastructure

How a multinational payments company achieves PCI Compliance on AWS.

Blog
Vertical Relevance Becomes an AWS Built on Control Tower (BoCT) & AWS Well-Architected Management & Governance Partner

AWS customers can choose turnkey solutions from Vertical Relevance which complement Control Tower capabilities to enhance their Control Tower environments through customized guardrails, account factory, identity management, security information and event management, and regulatory compliance solutions.

Use Case
Use Case: Service Control Policies (SCPs) Evaluation Engine

How a multinational financial service corporation was able to automate their deployment of SCPs across their AWS Organization.

Use Case: Automated Multi-Account Security & Governance at Scale

How a leading multinational asset management firm is leveraging AWS Control tower to automate account provisioning and configuration of guardrails to ensure agility and security at scale.

Blog
Simplify Compliance with the VR Security Framework and AWS Audit Manager

By leveraging AWS Audit Manager and the VR Cloud Controls Framework, we can create a custom audit framework that meets our individual business requirements, automate the audit process, and attain routine compliance.

Use Case
Use Case: Full-Scale Compliance with Policy as Code

How a leading global investment banking, securities, and investment management firm is leveraging policy-as-code techniques to enable application teams to adapt to the cloud faster without sacrificing security or compliance.

Blog
Automating the creation of Compliant AWS Accounts using AWS Control Tower for Financial Services

Learn how to automate account creation and guardrail deployment using AWS Control Tower.

Offer
Operationalizing AWS Compliance through Automation for Financial Services Institutions

Enabling the automated collection, evaluation, and reporting of compliance findings within an AWS organization. It can be applied to nearly any compliance framework or requirement whether it be NYDFS, PCI, FINRA, etc. to provide a centralized location for auditors and security personnel alike to determine an organization’s compliance posture.

Offer
Maximize AWS Security Posture at Scale through Automation

Learn how to shift controls left in the CI/CD process to stop non-compliant infrastructure from being deployed but also the visualization of your organizations security posture via a single pane of glass using AWS Security Hub.

Drive Financial Services Innovation

Financial Services institutions want to become more agile so they can innovate and respond to changes faster to better serve customers. Without speed, institutions begin to lose momentum which is why Vertical Relevance has developed tools and resources to accelerate your digital-first journey.

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