WCS North America Addresses Gaps in Cybersecurity and Compliance with End-to-End Offering
November 7, 2024
WCS North America — Innovative solutions that drive greater security and success
wcs-northamerica.com
Insights shared by Tiffani Westerman,
CEO at WCS North America
Tiffani, to start, please tell us about WCS North America and what you do.
At WCS North America, we are at the forefront of innovative solutions that drive the industry towards greater security and success. To be more specific, we enable our customers to continuously deliver the highest quality software, running on cloud native and hybrid cloud architectures, using modern DevSecOps methods. By providing comprehensive end-to-end support, fixed costs and real results, our customers can focus on their business.
As the CEO I have seen a shift in the market these past couple of years. Cybersecurity and compliance are becoming increasingly important for businesses as digital threats continue to rise and data regulations become more stringent. With the growing reliance on technology, companies face heightened risks of cyberattacks, data breaches, and loss of sensitive information, which can lead to significant financial and reputational damage. At the same time, governments are introducing stricter data privacy laws, requiring businesses to ensure proper handling and protection of customer and internal data.
Meeting these standards not only helps avoid penalties but also builds trust with clients and stakeholders.
To address this shift in the market, our WCS team has put together an end-to-end security compliance solution, in collaboration with industry leading partners, in an effort to support our clients from the very beginning of their compliance journey all the way through to audit, in one seamless approach.
Why is compliance essential for businesses today?
Compliance itself is a set of regulatory frameworks that essentially determine the legal requirements for data protection, financial reporting, workplace safety, ethical practices, etc., ensuring that companies meet the applicable standards for a particular framework.
Compliance has always been important, as it helps organizations avoid legal penalties, maintain a positive reputation, and operate responsibly within their industry; however, in the past it was more of a “nice to have” than a mandatory requirement. That has changed. We’re even seeing today that companies with active contracts are being told by their clients to show proof of compliance by a set deadline or risk their contacts being cancelled.
What are the most common challenges businesses face when trying to achieve certification?
Finding the time and making it a business priority. No matter the compliance journey stage you are on as a company, there is typically engineering work that needs to be done. Many regulatory standards involve specific technical requirements related to data security, system integrity, and operational processes. For example, implementing data encryption, setting up secure networks, and creating audit logs are technical tasks that engineers must design, build, and maintain. They’d also ensure that systems are resilient against cyber threats and meet the criteria for privacy, accessibility, and reliability.
As we know, engineering teams often have product roadmaps and backlogs that are years long, plus the added pressure to release new features and functionalities. To effectively put your business on hold to chase a compliance standard is often a disruptor that a lot of businesses can’t afford, not to mention the uncertainties of costs and time required to achieve audit completion.
This is where our team comes in. By purchasing our end-to-end solution, we support our clients on their compliance journey and ensure it’s not just started but finished successfully. Our solution integrates GRC compliance automation, expert guidance from our team, and a rigorous SOC 2 audit by our audit partners. It’s our engineers who roll up their sleeves to complete the required engineering work.
Tell me about the growth in the cybersecurity practice.
Cybersecurity and compliance really go hand in hand. Over the last two years, we’ve seen a major shift in focus, budget allocation, requirements and mandates for not just compliance but for an overall strong cybersecurity posture.
I believe there are many reasons for this, but one of the key factors is what I’d call the underlying influence of AI advancements. We’ve seen a lot of good coming out of artificial intelligence such as the release of tools like ChatGPT and Gemini. However, while people are enjoying increased productivity, these advancements have also opened the door for more bad actors to exploit systems in more aggressive and innovative ways.
From data breaches to increased phishing attacks, we’re seeing an increase in malicious attacks on our systems that are causing this change in the cybersecurity space. There’s a real demand for verified trust. We trust that you have good security posture, but we still want to see proof and third-party validation.
We’re also seeing a growing demand for end-to-end security. In the past, companies would often say, “We’re not SOC 2 compliant, but our vendor is,” which is no longer acceptable. Now, businesses are expected to demonstrate their own compliance, in addition to ensuring that their vendors and the platforms they use are also compliant. We can no longer play the blame game.
How does WCS North America assist companies in navigating their cybersecurity journey?
We put together a comprehensive end-to-end solution, recognizing our unique position in the market. We noticed gaps where companies were purchasing Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) tools and attempting to create compliance plans but struggling to get the necessary time from their engineering teams. Businesses often embark on this journey, but since it’s not part of their daily responsibilities, they have to invest significant time in research and learning. We identified an opportunity to offer not just a fixed price and predictable budget—enabling executives to make decisions with fewer uncertainties—but to truly deliver a complete security solution by closely collaborating with our partners. On top of that, most companies offering security and compliance support today don’t have the same level of cloud engineering expertise that we have at WCS. This allows us to step in, roll up our sleeves, and take on some of the heavy lifting from the engineering teams, especially when it comes to making changes to their environments, development tools, and production systems.
We identified a clear market need, particularly for customers being told they have six months to meet compliance or risk losing contracts. Compliance is no longer a “nice to have”—it’s becoming a serious business challenge. Companies now face the choice of addressing it quickly or suffering a revenue hit, unlike before when it was more optional. Our goal is to provide a complete end-to-end solution. We guide you through the entire process with experts who not only understand the complexities but are hands-on and dedicated to ensuring you pass the audit and achieve full compliance.
How did you choose your partners?
You get what you pay for. That’s true in most cases, but when it comes to security, you really want to be working with reputable companies.
We’ve partnered with the leading GRC tools which our team evaluated from a technical standpoint, considering market fit and the speed at which they release new frameworks and adapt to market changes as it’s a rapidly evolving landscape. The same holds true for our audit partners. We looked for reputable firms that operate with the utmost integrity.
Selecting our partners was an important step. We’re committed to the success in this journey and ensuring that our customers actually achieve compliance, rather than simply purchasing tools and services in the hopes of finding the time to implement them. With our partners, we have found a shared commitment to helping our clients succeed and ensuring that their environments are secure.
How is AI transforming the compliance landscape for businesses of all sizes?
AI is integrated into these GRC tools, offering policy templates that assist users in creating their own policies. There are many exciting features available. However, it’s important to recognize that while we’re leveraging AI for positive purposes, there are also bad actors looking to exploit it for malicious intent. At the same time, we are witnessing the emergence of various AI models. While AI itself isn’t new, it is now widely accessible to everyone, leading to significant changes in the landscape.
This is why I think compliance is so important right now. We’re seeing these major changes and we’re reacting to the new level of threat we’re seeing. The general fear of these more sophisticated attacks has put a new lens on the importance of security. We’re witnessing numerous significant breaches and an increasing awareness among customers about the vast amounts of data companies hold. There is now a strong demand from businesses and users alike for proof that this data is being stored securely, particularly as massive amounts of data are increasingly sought after for training AI models.
To wrap things up, what’s next for WCS North America?
I believe that we’ll be dedicating significant time over the next few years to further focus on the cybersecurity and compliance space. Internally, we’ve developed a strong passion for this area with our end-to-end solution that guides our customers on a journey toward successful compliance. Ultimately, we genuinely care about ensuring that our customers remain secure amid advancing technologies and stay at the forefront of new tools and best practices.
Here in the Kanata North Technology Park, we’ve launched a quarterly event called Cocktails & Compliance, which serves as a local initiative to foster the cybersecurity landscape and create a knowledge-sharing forum for professionals in the field. Our goal is to help all businesses prioritize security and maintain secure environments, so they can—to be fair—stay in business and succeed.
I always say, we’re not just providers, but we’re partners in success, and it’s true. As I lead our talented team into the forefront of the security-first cloud space, it is our commitment to innovation and excellence that will drive us to new heights, and I look forward to the incredible possibilities that lie ahead.
To learn more WCS North America, visit wcs-northamerica.com.
“Our solution integrates GRC compliance automation, expert guidance from our team, and a rigorous SOC 2 audit by our audit partners. It’s our engineers who roll up their sleeves to complete the required engineering work.”
— Tiffani Westerman, CEO, WCS North America