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Maintaining your organization’s compliance with industry standards and regulatory requirements demands robust technology solutions and comprehensive security compliance management. Continuous Control Monitoring (CCM) offers an advanced approach to ensuring the effectiveness of security measures and ongoing compliance. This article will provide an overview of 6clicks’ recently launched Continuous Control Monitoring capability and the enhanced features that users can leverage to manage risks, achieve compliance, and become audit-ready.
Continuous control monitoring process
The 6clicks Continuous Control Monitoring solution enables you to harness powerful security features through the 6clicks Developer API. This allows you to automate the testing of technical controls and implement real-time monitoring of IT or cloud environments, while the management of compliance and control data is handled within the 6clicks platform.
As a single-platform solution for compliance and control management, you can access a vast collection of security frameworks and regulations such as ISO 27001 and NIST CSF, set up your own controls or utilize our turnkey control sets, and create tasks or responsibilities for the implementation and management of controls, all within 6clicks. Our Developer API then seamlessly connects with Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) tools such as Wiz, which provides threat detection and response and enables the exchange of security findings with 6clicks. This allows you to continuously test if your controls are working as intended and monitor for any non-conformities, configuration issues, and security incidents, with alerts and updates automatically sent to 6clicks.
Now, with 6clicks’ integrated risk and incident management functionalities, you can then link your controls to relevant risks for mitigation and create issue records out of failed control tests to streamline remediation. Meanwhile, all data around your controls are consolidated within 6clicks, allowing you to unlock actionable insights and produce board-ready reports using built-in templates and data visualizations.
This entire process ultimately empowers 6clicks, other security tools and software, and your technology ecosystem to work together effortlessly to help your organization maintain its compliance.
How does 6clicks’ Continuous Control Monitoring work?
The process of continuous control monitoring starts at the Integrations page of the 6clicks platform, where users can connect 6clicks with CSPM tools, set up API keys to authenticate requests, and use our comprehensive list of API calls.
Next, you can navigate to the Controls module where all your control sets are stored. Open a control set and select a control. This will open the control details on the side panel. From there, under the Linked Data tab, we introduce the ability to create control tests.
Upon clicking the Create Test + icon, a new manual test is created and opened for you to add more information. You can also attach responsibilities – which can be one-time tasks or recurring activities – to control tests for evidence collection or to update test results for manual tests. The advantage of the 6clicks platform is that it provides functionality for both automated and manual testing, which are integral in facilitating holistic security compliance.
To run an automated test, switch the toggle to automatically monitor the control using your chosen CSPM tool. Upon selecting a CSPM tool, the 6clicks platform will assess its compatibility for automatic monitoring. If it meets the criteria, the configuration will be saved and the control will be monitored automatically. To do this, 6clicks will poll the CSPM tool at regular intervals to check for any issues with the control and retrieve relevant data.
Each test conducted on a control will then display either a Passed or Failed status. If there are issues detected by the CSPM tool, the test will automatically be marked as ‘Failed’ and the test result details will display links to each of the issues on the CSPM platform. You can then link a new 6clicks issue record to the test to take further action.
Meanwhile, you can run a manual test by reviewing control responsibilities and other documentation attached to a newly created or previous test.
You can then click the + icon beside the test to log a new test result.
For manual tests, users can also go into the Test Results tab of a particular test and click ‘Log test result’ to change its status. The Test Results tab is also where users can view or delete past test results.
Finally, based on control test results, you can retrieve critical insights from each control set such as the success rate of control tests and the overall test coverage. With this feature, you can get a quick overview of the performance of your controls at any point in time without performing a lengthy assessment.
For a detailed demonstration of our CCM capability, check out these walkthrough videos:
Continuous Control Monitoring features
Our CCM solution provides you with cutting-edge capabilities such as:
- Rigorous control testing – Automate or perform manual testing of technical controls to ensure that they are operating in line with your security policies and compliance obligations. For example, automated workflows for user access management – a common ISO 27001 control – can be configured and continuously assessed to detect any unauthorized access or deviations from the standard process of access rights provision. This increases the efficiency of control testing and provides an accurate evaluation of the performance of your controls.
- Round-the-clock monitoring – Reduce the likelihood and impact of potential risks through real-time surveillance of threats and vulnerabilities and gain enhanced visibility of your overall compliance posture. Taking the previous example, you can run automated checks and trigger control failure alerts when user access workflows or procedures are not followed or when unauthorized access attempts occur. This allows your organization to proactively monitor assets such as data and servers, enabling dynamic security for your technology infrastructure.
- Streamlined evidence collection – Lastly, easily retrieve evidence needed for audits and prove your compliance through the automatic documentation of control test results. Continuous control testing enables you to verify the effectiveness of your controls through pass-fail ratios and other key metrics that can help inform your decisions and improve compliance.
Aside from these features, upcoming developments include automating control responsibility creation and task assignments, as well as adding more integration partners to meet our customers’ growing needs for security automation and optimization.
Experience next-level control and compliance monitoring with 6clicks
Get in touch with the 6clicks team to start leveraging our Continuous Control Monitoring solution for robust risk management and proactive compliance.
Written by Jami Samson
Jami is a seasoned Technical Writer at 6clicks, where she harnesses her extensive experience in domains such as information technology, artificial intelligence, and GRC to craft high-quality content. Having worked in the marketing field since 2017, she has established a solid background in copywriting and content writing and is skilled in translating complex topics into informative and engaging pieces. Apart from writing, Jami is also passionate about music.
