Case Study: Richey May Technology Solutions Reduces Time to Complete an Engagement by 20% with PlexTrac A cybersecurity service provider turns time into money with a customized reporting and assessment platform to automate their manual data management and reporting load. The Client: Richey May Technology Solutions Richey May Technology Solutions offers a wide variety of cybersecurity, assurance and technology services across a diverse set of industry verticals. They specialize in mortgage banking and media/entertainment but also offer services to companies in real estate, privately held business, and commerce finance companies seeking to enhance their cybersecurity posture. Their diverse client base necessitates the use of a number of different assessment frameworks, including well-known frameworks like the FFIEC’s assessment to lesser known ones like the Motion Picture Association’s Trusted Partner Network. Some of these control frameworks are very large — the FFIEC’s assessment has over 500 questions. These assessments involve huge amounts of data, requiring collaboration and team work to manage the project. The Problem: Data Drudgery and Manual Processes Team members at Richey May were using cumbersome Excel-based manual processes for data collection and report generation. The lack of a single, collaborative database meant that assessment data had to be gathered from multiple spreadsheets and manually collated into a single rough document. The data then had to be manually copied into the final report document delivered to the client. This process was very labor intensive and an extremely inefficient use of the talents of highly skilled information security professionals. “At the end of the day, time is money, and the way we were doing assessments was very time onerous. Not only was it a lot of time to sit there and go line by line and try to figure out the answers to questions, but it was also hard to translate the sources used into something executive leadership could read and ingest that made sense,” explained Richey May Technology Solutions Cybersecurity Architect, Arnel Manalo. “All of this was a manual process — before PlexTrac — which led to the search for a tool that could automate and upload items to one location and automatically have a report generate from one of the templates that we uploaded” The Solution: A Customizable Platform and Collaborative Partner When Richey May Technology Solutions initiated their search for an automation platform to better handle the data they needed to manage, it became apparent that no one solution met all of their requirements out of the box. However, PlexTrac stood out because of the customization and collaboration possibilities offered. PlexTrac was able to incorporate Richey May Technology Solutions’s needs into a development roadmap — and to deliver on those commitments promptly. “We evaluated a few other solutions, and there are many other reporting tools that we might have been able to utilize. Really, what it came down to was customizability and the willingness to improve with us,” said Manalo. “PlexTrac beat out all of the other competitors because all of our feature requests were listened to. We were constantly told, ‘how can we make this better?’, ‘how can we help us help you?’, and even ‘let’s gear PlexTrac towards your specific use case.’” The Results: Efficient Processes and Engaged Clients With PlexTrac, the process of administering assessments and generating reports is now faster and easier for the Richey May Technology Solutions team. The assessment team is able to manage all work in a single repository on engagements still in progress. Microsoft Word-based reports are generated directly into a custom template, designed with the customer’s experience in mind, that automatically filters out controls marked “compliant.” This eliminates the need for manually parsing and formatting the data into Richey May’s reporting methodology and brand look and creates a finished product in half the time. PlexTrac’s integrations with major scanning tools like Tenable.IO and Nessus also allow Richey May Technology Solutions to easily incorporate automated results with their manual findings. Additionally, the team can compare the results year-over-year in the platform, providing their customers with an understanding of how their posture has changed and how far they need to go to reach their objectives. “After implementing PlexTrac, Richey May performed an analysis on