Nonprofit Uses CCM to Speed Tech Procurement Decisions

Summary

Nonprofit government services organization accelerates procurement decisions on emerging technology by automating security controls assessment and generating a compliance readiness score.

Challenge: streamlining procurement in the face of compliance and cybersecurity risks

This non-profit organization faced significant challenges in adopting new tools and solutions due to the cumbersome and manual processes involved in procurement decisions. The lack of readily available data to asset the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for new technologies, coupled with unclear timelines for obtaining an Authority to Operate (ATO), significantly delayed technology adoption.

This manual and subjective assessment process slowed down procurement and posed risks in cybersecurity compliance and governance, hindering the organization’s ability to serve their stakeholders.

• Procurement decisions are slowed by manual process which in turn delays technology adoption
• Data is not readily available to assess the total cost of ownership (TCO) for new tools
• No clear understanding of how long a vendor or product would take for an Authority to Operate (ATO)

Solution: digitize documents and use CCM to streamline workflows and procurement

To address these challenges head-on, the organization embarked on a journey of digital transformation by digitizing existing documents and data and implementing automated workflows. This pivotal move was bolstered by leveraging a Continuous Controls Monitoring (CCM) platform integrated with a leading cloud security platform.

The ability to analyze asset scans against security controls to assess compliance and ATO readiness revolutionized their approach to procurement. This innovative solution enabled a streamlined, efficient, and more secure process for evaluating new technologies, ensuring compliance with relevant cybersecurity standards and regulations.

Result: accelerated procurement decisions and enhanced compliance readiness

By adopting RegScale and integrating it with key cloud security services, the non-profit organization digitized and automated their procurement evaluation process and gained a clear understanding of potential security and compliance gaps. This integration facilitated an automated method to estimate costs and timelines for remediation efforts and to obtain an ATO, thus significantly reducing manual labor and subjective assessments.

The ability to generate a compliance readiness score easily factored into the total cost of ownership calculations, enabling faster and more informed procurement decisions. The organization has overcome the significant hurdles in procurement, accelerating their decision-making process for adopting new technology and tools and serving their stakeholders.