Vendor Management

Vendor management can be a daunting task but, with the proper assistance, managing your vendors can be a simple process. Accume Partners guides clients as they navigate the nuances of their complicated vendor relationships. Allow us to assist in the review of vendor-promised products and services to ensure that you are receiving what has been promised.

Accume Partners also provides tangible and intangible benefits to our clients in an effort to assist in the maintenance and management of successful and efficient vendor relationships. These benefits help avoid major problems that could negatively impact your business.

IT and Network Security/Penetration Testing

Today’s evolving and increasingly sophisticated technologies have increased risks such as cyber-vandalism, intellectual piracy and hacking. Protecting your systems and data requires rigorous testing of security features.

Accume Partners’ highly experienced information security experts have the focused expertise to effectively identify and evaluate vulnerabilities in your daily operations. Our security review identifies inefficient controls, sensitive resources and databases, and vulnerabilities in your internal and external networks. We then deploy a comprehensive methodology that is customized to the specific needs and infrastructure of your organization. After conducting your information security assessment, we will summarize our findings and provide you with recommendations for closing security loopholes and vulnerabilities. Commensurate with this, we will transfer our knowledge of best practices to professionals in your organization so your staff quickly becomes knowledgeable and productive with new security solutions, policies and procedures.

Business Continuity Planning

Implementation/Conversion

Replacing legacy systems and processes with newer, more sophisticated applications is part of scaling your business and making it more efficient. Technology vendors provide assurances and project management teams who have the best of intentions; but you need an objective assessment to ensure that your company’s technology transition will go smoothly, without loss of data, damage to systems, or delay to critical processes. You need to be certain that the desired end will be achieved.

Accume Partners pre-implementation review team will conduct the technical due diligence of walking through your current systems, investigating the proposed new technology, and assessing your transition plan to provide an objective assessment pointing out potential pitfalls and advising you on how best to mitigate potential issues. We also monitor progress against project plans and milestones and independently validate the conversion of data and system testing performed by your implementation team.

Disaster Recovery Planning

When disaster strikes, you need to be back online in days or hours, not weeks or months. While brick-and-mortar business takes time to rebuild, your company’s data, network, and infrastructure must be protected and flexible enough to return to “business as usual” in the shortest time possible following an unexpected event.

Accume Partners can provide you with assurance that your disaster recovery and business continuity plans protect staff and critical data, mitigate damages to network infrastructure, back up your corporate intelligence, and secure intellectual property and proprietary information so that your business’ assets are protected and quickly operational. In addition, we will help you evaluate all affordable options – like operating from a secondary location, maintaining virtual operations, or relocating your operation –knowing that your data and intellectual assets are ready and available whenever and wherever you need them.

PCI DSS Compliance

Accume Partners’ certified IT auditing and security staff and proven assessment process can help your company navigate the process of documenting and testing the security controls that surround the processing of credit and payment card transactions. We understand the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) – a multifaceted security standard that includes requirements for security management, policies, procedures, network architecture, software design, and other critical protective measures. Using our proven risk assessment methodology, we will work with both your management and your IT staff to establish a roadmap to compliance.

Our PCI DSS compliance services include:

• External security scans - As an Approved Scanning Vendor (ASV), we perform vulnerability scans and produce compliance reports in accordance with the Technical and Operational Requirements for PCI ASV.
• Self-assessment Advisory Services – We work with management, IT and business owners to determine scope, timing, and manpower, and to manage execution of your program. We will perform a gap analysis to identify the current posture of the organization with respect to the control requirements mandated under PCI DSS, identify all areas that credit card data reside, develop control/testing matrices, and to highlight areas that may require improvement based on industry leading best practices.
• Testing of Security Controls – We will test the security controls to assure that they are functioning as intended, and recommend specific changes in areas where the existing environment is out of compliance.
• Remediation Advisory Services - We will lead remediation efforts to systems and practices that process cardholder data and make recommendations to management for security architecture enhancements where necessary to remediate specific issues identified in the Report on Compliance (ROC).

Vendor Managment