I recently had the chance to visit with 6clicks Chief Technology Officer, Dr. Heather Buker and we take up producing an audit-ready report with 6clicks Pixel Perfect™ for a sponsored podcast series. You can check out her episode here.
Buker is the transitional resource who takes the engineering and tech part of the 6clicks solution and puts it into a workable solution for customers. She says of herself, “you can see me, affectionately, as a translator if you will of the product and functionality and how that translates to business use cases, value propositions and things that clients really care about.” She went on to note, “functionality is only as good as the value proposition that it serves. I am here to make sure that those two things meet. I’m kind of the bridge.”
It used to be that the byword for data and data processing was GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). However, now it has evolved to “data is only as good as what you can get out of it. So, it’s not enough to just collect the data and give organizations a sort of single source of truth for their GRC programs anymore. Right? That’s what every SAS solution in the GRC space is really striving for. But, furthermore, users want easy, efficient ways to get that data out of the tool. So, it’s always a bit of an uphill battle when it comes to reporting, you know, there’s a constant flow of new requirements. Every organization has a different use case that needs supporting et cetera, and users have to be able to get their GRC data out of the tool and make it digestible for a wide variety of audiences. And that’s really the key right there. The wide variety of audiences we’re trying to satisfy with reporting needs, what good is it to track their risk and compliance data? If they can’t show/prove to an auditor or their Board members on their current risk posture at the monthly meeting, simply put it isn’t. So, assets reporting is, and frankly always will be, a critical piece of the GRC SAS solution puzzle”.
The problem that the 6clicks Pixel Perfect™ helps solve is repeatability. As Buker explained, “The more we can make GRC processes repeatable, even when it comes to reporting, the easier our platform will be to use and the more widely adopted we can become. To solve for this in the reporting world, we decided to automate report generation.” I asked her for an example, and she said, “6clicks Pixel Perfect™ can take a completed PCI DSS assessment and return Section Six of the report on compliance, filled out an audit ready.” This means a template mandated by the Security Standards Council to drive this functionality and ensure the report is ready to be submitted and properly formatted when generated. All an organization has to do is complete their PCI assessment and the platform will perform our “6clicks magic on the other side and deliver the PCI form from those assessment results minus all of the hassle. We are talking hours upon hours of time savings for QSAs merchants and others on their engagements.”
We concluded with some of Buker’s thoughts on how multiple stakeholders can use the information that 6clicks Pixel Perfect™ solution creates, up and down the chain in an organization, literally from the technical folks on the front lines up to the Board of Directors. She emphasized “what this functionality has to be, has to be up and down, high level, low level, right to Board members who have their monthly meeting or senior management that maybe, managing multiple projects across various lines of business. They don’t always know what they’re looking at when they look at some of these low-level risk, detailed reports or even data in general. We must make it digestible for them. We have to make it meaningful for them. We have to be able to produce reports and analytics at a really high level.”
Buker had a great phrase, that it all has to be in an “accordion range. That is, from highest level to lowest level and then back. And that’s really like the secret sauce of reporting and analytics in the GRC space. Being able to take it full circle from driving change to implementing change and all of the various levels in any organization.”
For more information on 6clicks, check out their website here.
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