A common challenge for funds is identifying cybersecurity risks at the portfolio level and navigating how to remediate gaps. RSM provides a customized cybersecurity Rapid Assessment® to establish a baseline for a portfolio company’s current security program, benchmark their maturity against peers and identify critical points of weakness. It also reveals whether gaps stem from weaknesses in personnel, processes or technology. The purpose is to help organizations prioritize areas of remediation and allocate resources where they are most needed.

RSM’s real-time dashboarding provides PE funds and their portfolio companies with crucial visibility into their cyber-risk status, using metrics consistent with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework. By centralizing monitoring and reporting, funds and their portfolio companies can identify emerging vulnerabilities to make proactive, data-driven decisions. Data visualization across all portfolio companies enables better, faster and more focused decision-making based on accurate, consistent data, and facilitates timely and accurate reporting to stakeholders.

RSM’s suite of cyber resilience, response and recovery solutions gives funds the ability to identify high-risk portfolio companies and improvement priorities. Services include identifying the systems, data and resources that support a fund's mission-critical activities, assessing how they could be compromised in an event and building a plan to orchestrate response and recovery from an incident. This approach enables portfolio companies to resume normal business operations as quickly as possible.

PE funds that want peace of mind without the hassle may opt for outsourcing risk and security functions. RSM’s managed security services allow funds to leverage a virtual team of cybersecurity professionals to boost their response and resolution capabilities. A cloud-based software solution is another option for managing cybersecurity governance.

• Vulnerability scanning: This noninvasive assessment identifies vulnerabilities from missing patches, misconfigurations and malicious services without actively exploiting them. Typically completed in one to three days, it serves as an initial step to pinpoint areas requiring further investigation through penetration testing.
• Network penetration testing: RSM advisors serve as ethical hackers to simulate attacks to manually exploit vulnerabilities, aiming to compromise sensitive systems and data. This process typically takes five to 10 days to provide concrete evidence of potential breaches, even if it doesn't offer a comprehensive security overview.
• Application testing: Conducted over five to 10 days, this service reviews web-based applications—including web, mobile (iOS and Android), thick client and APIs—to verify their security through code reviews and specialized tests.
• Red team and purple team testing: Spanning eight to 12 weeks, these in-depth technical tests simulate real-world attack scenarios to evaluate an organization's monitoring, detection and response capabilities. Testing by the red team involves external attackers attempting to infiltrate the environment, while testing by the purple team fosters collaboration between attackers and defenders to enhance security measures.
• Social engineering: Over three to five days, RSM employs tactics such as phishing emails, vishing (phone calls), SMS phishing or smishing (malicious text messages) and in-person attempts to deceive individuals into providing unauthorized access or information. This testing gauges the organization's security awareness and resilience against deceptive practices.