ACA Group, a governance, risk and compliance (GRC) advisor, has released ACA Vantage for Cyber to help private markets firms discover, prevent and remediate critical cyber vulnerabilities across their portfolio.
The offering allows operating partners and sponsors at private markets firms globally to build and operate a formal program of cybersecurity portfolio oversight and conduct an ongoing, effective assessment of their portfolio companies’ cyber posture over the entire investment lifecycle.
ACA stated the solution comes during a time of growing cyber risk, especially with the proliferation of ransomware-as-a-service, business email compromise schemes and supply chain attacks. With the rising threat levels, private market firms are moving from an ad-hoc approach to overseeing portfolio companies’ cyber programs more systematically.
A recent survey from ACA Group found that 73% of firms do not have a minimum-security baseline and 68% do not perform annual risk assessments for their portfolio companies.
ACA Vantage for Cyber helps firms with fewer internal resources to keep pace with industry changes, apply best practices and reduce costs while managing downside risk, creating value and increasing investment from Limited Partners.
Risk and remediation efforts are displayed in real-time via ACA’s GRC and regulatory technology platform ComplianceAlpha. It gives users digestible results to help them guide and prioritise further action steps across their portfolios.
The offering enables continuous, portfolio-wide cybersecurity monitoring and assessment, methodology that enables “apples-to-apples” comparison of a firm’s risk, and expert support to build an oversight platform. ACA partner Kavitha Venkita said, “When a company within the private equity firm’s portfolio suffers a breach, this results in financial and operational losses to the portfolio business but equally to the sponsors and investors.
“What’s needed is a programmatic approach to cybersecurity across all portfolio companies, designed to be formally governed and applied consistently. A confidence-building portfolio oversight program is a competitive advantage today for attracting and retaining investment from Limited Partners; tomorrow, it will likely be table stakes.”
ACA recently released ACA Signature, a solution that is focused on meeting the compliance needs of financial firms.
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