The Benefits of Pathlock’s Continuous Control Monitoring Software for Data and Transactions

Roles and authorizations across ERP applications are constantly changing. This creates new challenges for organizations handling large volumes of data and transactions. Monitoring activities surrounding sensitive data transactions becomes impossible with manual processes when there are hundreds of thousands of user accounts and profiles. Organizations today require Continuous Control Monitoring software (CCM) to filter hundreds and thousands of transactional details, correlate data across user activities, and remediate threats in real-time.

What Is Continuous Control Monitoring, and Why Do You Need It?

Gartner defines continuous control monitoring software as “a set of technologies to reduce business losses through continuous monitoring and reducing the cost of audits through continuous auditing of the controls in financial and other transactional applications.” CCM is an officially recognized risk management product crucial for transaction and data monitoring in your ERP applications. CCM could also be performed for segregation of duties (CCM-SOD) security violations, which are one of the most significant fraud risk indicators; CCM for transactions (CCM-T); and CCM for master data (CCM-MD), according to Gartner. Layers of security controls for your sensitive data and transactions can be enabled by combining all three.

Why is Continuous Control Monitoring Important for Business?

Managing overlapping regulations, maintaining complex system configurations, and detecting fraud or material weaknesses are challenging tasks that reduce IT and business teams’ productivity. The main reason behind this is manual controls, which fail to detect and remediate risks promptly and cost-effectively. The IT, HR, Finance, and Audit teams are bogged down with manually documenting, testing, and reporting how processes, controls, and configurations are maintained and improved. Most of these controls frequently rely on a random sampling of limited data and cannot track suspicious transactions. Without a continuous control and monitoring process, organizations struggle to effectively monitor their data and transactions, which raises red flags during audits.

Three Ways CCM Assists in Data & Transaction Monitoring

Improved data and transaction management and monitoring reduce the need for IT teams to perform complex controls testing. Pathlock assures organizations that their risks are being managed proactively and that the appropriate controls are in place.

1. Continuous Insights, For Less

Pathlock’s continuous control monitoring provides context-based, real-time monitoring within your ERP applications at the access, transaction, and data levels — improving your audit-readiness. It allows you to detect and respond to threats by capturing granular data at multiple levels. Pathlock CCM will let you monitor access and usage trends and notify you of suspicious activities. The continuous monitoring and detailed log data help your organization eliminate a significant amount of manual effort when performing audits and improving compliance with new regulations. The cost of control and monitoring is reduced as Pathlock unifies control over regulatory risks, material weaknesses, and process failures.

2. Better Control and Monitoring of Business Processes

Pathlock CCM allows organizations to automatically capture audit and control data, providing insight to continuously improve and optimize financial reporting, data management, procure to pay, and more. This lets your teams better monitor, optimize, and control transactions and business processes.

3. Improved Master Data Management at a Lower Cost

A core objective of our CCM is to move away from the traditional approach of randomly sampling a portion of the master data over regular intervals and toward continuously monitoring 100% of the data and transactions throughout the year. Pathlock’s centralized control over master data and configurations enables continuous control testing and real-time alerts, for more effective monitoring of sensitive data and transactions. This means that your ERP systems will be more reliable, your data will be more secure, and your teams will be audit-ready.

Reach out to our security experts to discover how Pathlock can help secure data and transactions with continuous control monitoring software. Schedule a demo today.