ASSET™ moves compliance beyond “approval” to ongoing security + risk management excellence by accelerating and automating community-endorsed controls that evolve as rapidly as your assets.

CONNECTION

It’s no wonder that most organizations feel adrift when it comes to addressing all their enterprise security needs. Threats are proliferating, related costs are mounting, and long-standing compliance and risk management practices are failing to provide companies with the tools they need to address their specific risk circumstances.

We know what it’s like. Businesses with limited resources face a constantly evolving and expanding universe of risks. At the same time, many are experiencing a growing number of loss events with costly financial, operational, and reputational impacts. While various compliance requirements promise much security “goodness” to help meet these challenges, their benefits too often go unrealized. Today’s compliance process demands increasing amounts of time, effort, and expense that deliver only fleeting outcomes with inadequate security benefit. It distracts from the essential, erecting barriers to risk management innovation and discouraging the adoption of new solutions that could better address emerging challenges.

SIGHT

Ark NSS offers organizations a better way – ASSET™ – a new security “north star” that helps prioritize key asset constellations and illuminates productive ways to protect them. ASSET™ provides this insight visually and in real-time to inform more effective risk management investment.

To see is to experience. The ASSET™ method transcends the cumbersome and tedious nature of today’s compliance process through a stunning optic display that provides a complete picture of an organization’s assets, the solutions implemented to secure them, and their risk management impact. ASSET™ helps users rapidly recognize and understand an organization’s compliance or vulnerability levels in a single glance by leveraging the capacity of the human eye. It does so in real-time and over time – allowing users to target security investments and track their progress in highly compelling ways. ASSET™ transforms traditional compliance activity from a drudgery into an easy-to-use, forward-leaning exercise that includes “gamifying” the system. In the process, it makes the benefits inherent in compliance requirements accessible to and attainable by everyone.

IMPACT

Organizations require an improved, more cost-effective way to ensure that sustained compliance with security best practices, regulations, and standards truly makes them safer. ASSET™ meets this need by reinventing the compliance process.

The ASSET™ method provides users with automated, real-time awareness about whether their adopted prevention and mitigation solutions actually work instead of static check-box surveys that provide no such insight. ASSET™ immediately alerts organizations when chosen controls fall short. It directs them to proven, peer-reviewed and recommended alternatives that fill identified security gaps in business asset deployments – as those deployments exist today and as they evolve over time. Through these continuous assessments, ASSET™ not only reduces the cost, time, and resources needed for meaningful compliance but also helps companies tie security investments to optimal solutions that deliver proven security results. Thus, ASSET™ promotes more resilient enterprises that not only survive but thrive across the shifting risk landscape.

WHY?

To set a sure and steady course toward a desired destination, travelers first must find their bearings. Where have they been, where are they now, and where are they going? And when should they reorient to ensure safe and sound arrivals? Successful security journeys are no different.

When approaching any risk management challenge, the first question we ask at Ark NSS is: Why? Why is it a problem? Why do organizations tackle it a certain way? Why not consider alternative approaches that might deliver better results? To overcome shared challenges with the best possible solutions, organizations must ask why and other basic questions before deciding new and true ways forward. The ASSET™ method is a culmination of precisely this kind of inquiry: why does today’s compliance process fall short, what benefits should it provide, and how can it be reimagined to deliver maximum security value?

KNOWLEDGE

Organizations today exhibit vastly different levels of risk management capability. What they share are similar loss experiences that might have put them out of business but for smart security choices designed to address their unique situations. Ark NSS provides a platform to share those choices, and wisdom, with everyone.

To partner well, we must know the compliance challenges that every enterprise faces. Energy, financial, health care, retail, utility, and other organizations all encounter and address risks differently. In response, they strive to adhere to a slew of security authorities– some specific to particular industries but many common to all. Unfortunately, the innovative compliance strategies that many organizations independently develop often remain siloed away from peers who would benefit immeasurably from shared knowledge. The ASSET™ method recognizes that common risk management problems should generate shared solutions. ASSET™ establishes a knowledge repository that highlights individual security successes for the benefit of all.

VANTAGE

A commanding view of the night sky includes the moon, the planets, and thousands of stars. A commanding view of an organization depicts its people, process, data, and technology assets; associated risks; and potential pathways to improvement. ASSET™ provides that view to all users, clearly and continuously.

Whatever its industry sector, an organization working to satisfy its compliance obligations must maintain a critical and continuous sense of its security performance before it can contribute meaningfully to broader insight. The ASSET™ method provides that capability in a vividly beautiful way. ASSET™’s unique visual interface literally “shows” viewers when solutions function as desired, automatically flags problem areas, and seamlessly provides security professionals with a range of action options to fix detected shortcomings. Moreover, ASSET™ provides this perspective in ways that are adaptable, flexible, and scalable to the needs of every enterprise. Whatever an entity’s profile, ASSET™ rapidly tailors its security “picture to support quick comprehension of facts and effective risk management response.

COMMUNITY

What good is knowing your organization has a security vulnerability if you don’t know how to fix it? What if you’ve hatched a tentative plan of action but seek peer feedback before confidently executing it? Ark NSS recognizes the value of such collaboration. ASSET™ makes it happen.

People are an organization’s greatest asset. They include the security practitioners, problem solvers, virtuosos, and visionaries who can accomplish far more together for enterprise risk management and resilience than any one person can alone. Put simply, there is great strength in diversity. The ASSET™ method provides a forum for security professionals from both the private and public sectors to come together; define common problems; and design, develop, and recommend state-of-the-art services and solutions to better address risk. Through this focused, ongoing, and welcoming dialogue, individual enterprises, entire industries, and the whole world benefit.

EXPERTS

No one organization can house all the experts needed to solve our shared security challenges. Their knowledge, moreover, means nothing if it can’t be put to practical use. ASSET™ bridges these divides, connecting experts with the front-line risk managers who need their insights most.

Ark NSS has initiated an ongoing conversation with compliance, risk management, and standardization leaders in order to advance the state of the art of security practice. We are asking these experts to shift their efforts from the “micro” to the “macro” to share best thinking in plain terms understandable to all. Such sharing will ensure that stakeholders at every level of an organization benefit directly from their collective intelligence, helping both technical and non-technical professionals make common cause against security challenges. Through this engagement, the ASSET™ method will identify a collection of continuously evolving risk management solutions that every enterprise can easily adapt to their particular requirements.

USERS

Effective risk management requires true partnerships where the know-how and needs of every party are constantly engaged to support joint and sustained action for good. ASSET™ enables exactly this kind of cooperation.

The ASSET™ method is not a pre-defined, static solution. Instead, it recognizes that what the world considers “optimal” security today evolves constantly through the combined experiences of experts, consumers and vendors alike. ASSET™ meets our users where we find them, responding in service to their individual circumstances in ways that draw directly on this dynamic. Informed by the latest ASSET™ insight, clients have the final word on what we do with that knowledge on their behalf. They define how and where we go together.

SIMPLICITY

ASSET™ incorporates a core characteristic that promotes swift and certain security achievement: simplicity. Anyone can use ASSET™’s straightforward approach to drive a highly successful, cyber-inclusive enterprise risk management program.

When C-Suite and other executives encounter a cybersecurity offering, their immediate reaction often is, “that’s for our technical experts,” rather than, “that’s a tool for me.” This typical response prevents organizations from treating cyber risk as a genuine enterprise risk management problem. As a result, they fail to properly prioritize, resource, and address cyber risk in relation to the many other business risks they face. The ASSET™ method overcomes this shortcoming by familiarizing business leaders with their companies’ cyber risk postures through an intuitive interface that links directly to easy-to-understand options for enhancing security. In so doing, ASSET™ aligns those leaders more powerfully with their cyber and other risk management teams – promoting closer partnerships that advance wiser risk management investments, more meaningful compliance, and more successful cybersecurity outcomes.

INTEGRITY

Ark NSS is in business to provide security solutions and services. Our number one philosophy, however, is to empower our fellow users. If we can design or recommend offerings that enable them to accomplish themselves what otherwise would require significant external assistance, then we’ve done our job.

REQUIREMENTS

We can handle more compliance requirements! They represent the informed judgment of countless security practitioners who know firsthand what works best to prevent risk losses. It’s the traditional compliance process that’s broken. ASSET™ simplifies and accelerates that process, making compliance requirements truly actionable – and effective – for the first time.

Any time a group of experts identify the best way to configure a device, secure a network, or design a communications protocol, it moves security forward. Compliance requirements embody a tremendous amount of this insight and operations perspective about what companies should do to protect themselves from risk losses. They typically are the product of years of debate and consensus-building that define an ideal that security professionals then study and strive to achieve. Requirements are always adapting, developing, and progressing in order to address new risks and rapidly changing technologies. And frankly, more of them might help – if they are made easier to implement. The problem with compliance is not requirements themselves but the present process through which they are incorporated, managed, and assessed. The ASSET™ method fixes that process, making requirements the powerful risk management tools that their developers intended by tying them directly, in real time, to a range of controls proven to enhance security performance.

DOCUMENT

To excel in today’s economy, a company must show that it’s a “safer” risk. ASSET™ provides organizations with proof that their chosen security approaches have and will continue to help them weather even the most potent hazard.

Proof is powerful. It’s what an attorney needs to make a strong case. It’s what a scientist uses to support a hypothesis. It’s what an organization needs to tell its risk management story to business partners, clients, credit rating agencies, insurers, investors, and others. That story is critical to all these audiences who increasingly seek assurances that an enterprise is a safe business bet because it enjoys a verifiably robust risk posture. The ASSET™ method provides that proof, making previously complicated security demonstrations to commercial and compliance stakeholders easy. Through shareable, trusted, and up-to-the-minute assessments, ASSET™ clearly shows whether an organization’s chosen solutions are working, determines their impact during experienced loss events, and directs users to current, peer-recommended alternatives to address deficiencies. It goes further, moreover, by providing organizations with advance evidence of their enterprise resilience. ASSET™ enables users to stage their environments and experiment with alternative solutions that best protect them – all before committing a single resource dollar toward a particular security investment.

CONTINUOUS

When Ark NSS says, “continuous compliance,” we mean it. To support an organization’s security and resilience efforts, ASSET™ provides live insight into its compliance status. At the same time, ASSET™ presents new solutions for an organization’s consideration while logging its security progress.

In recent years, “continuous compliance” and “continuous monitoring” have become popular but commonly misunderstood catch phrases. They generally entail infrequent checklist approaches to risk management often based on stale and outdated risk information and processes. We offer users something completely different. The ASSET™ method is truly “continuous,” performing real-time, human-to-organization, machine-to-machine and machine speed risk calculations that promote constant awareness of performing and non-performing solutions. This insight helps companies maintain an elevated state of compliance with far less effort and quickly directs their attention, dollars, and time to real problem areas. In this way, ASSET™ establishes organizations as resilient enterprises positioned for decisive competitive advantage.

DISCOVERY

Like travelers who once used the stars to guide their journeys, organizations today use ASSET™ to reach a common security destination: clarity on how to spend limited risk management resources most wisely. Ark NSS has embarked with the entire security community to find needed answers.

Which risk management activities should a company undertake? Where, and under what circumstances? These remain confounding questions for most organizations that struggle to determine what investments offer the most security “bang for the buck.” The ASSET™ method lays the groundwork for discovery by supporting robust information sharing about best-in-class solutions and how they fare against real-world incidents. Now and over time, ASSET™ will not only help identify top security risks and effective controls across multiple industry sectors but also clarify the risk management return of particular solutions. ASSET™ will also promote more informed peer-to-peer benchmarking and sector differentiation that highlights the need for and development of industry-specific approaches. This knowledge will support the kinds of risk forecasting, trending, and modeling that will keep companies ahead of the risk management curve.

MISSION

Ark Network Security Solutions (Ark NSS) was founded to help organizations respond to the proliferating number of requirements imposed by today’s compliance process. That resource-intensive undertaking can stifle innovative thought and delay the deployment of critical operating systems. Well-intended policies have repeatedly resulted in circumvention of procedures, exception application, and static results that are obsolete moments after “compliance” is obtained. Ark NSS has revolutionized the traditional compliance process and created a holistic approach to continuously meet compliance requirements and enhance organizational resilience. Our patent-pending methods and technology provide organizations with real-time accreditation, no matter how simple or complex their systems, which delivers clear and measurable security value.

CONTACT

Engage us at 703-651-6656, or use the form below.