Nearly three decades of financial services industry experience convinced Copytalk CEO Maree Moscati of the importance of walking the walk. “Coming from financial services, I know those Cs after your name are important,” says Moscati, who maintains her securities licensing from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) to keep current with her financial services customers’ challenges. Moscati also earned the Shared Assessments Certified Third Party Risk Professional (CTPRP)  certification in part to further enhance her leadership credibility at the helm of a company whose success hinges on meeting its highly regulated clients’ third party risk management (TPRM) requirements. She discusses the benefits of the CTPRP and why she urges her staff – and her board of directors – to earn the same certification.

What is your role in addressing third party risk managment?
Maree Moscati: As CEO, I sign off on all third party risk management decisions we make at Copytalk. The majority of our clients are financial institutions and we also serve legal firms, insurance companies and healthcare companies. Given the regulatory compliance requirements our customers face, we are absolutely committed to information security and data privacy. My role on the Shared Assessments advisory board is essential to monitoring trends, issues and practices related to information security and data privacy. Our involvement with Shared Assessments also helps us address another critical objective: satisfying the third party assessments our customers give us as helpfully, clearly and efficiently as possible. Given how many financial and legal firms we serve, we have auditors of some kind visiting us at least every other month and often more frequently – which is great. Our attitude is, “Bring it on” because we know those interactions give us more opportunities to improve effectiveness and efficiency.

How has earning the CTPRP designation helped you as a CEO – and how has it helped your company?
Maree Moscati:  As a leader, I don’t ask anybody in my firm to do anything that I don’t do. I felt it was important for me to go through the certification process before I asked anybody in our organization to do it as well. Earning the certification was an accomplishment, and it conveys Copytalk’s commitment to privacy and security issues. Our clients and prospects see that I have a CTPRP, which is helpful because we operate in a highly competitive arena. I know that the certifications we have as a firm, and as individuals, really make a difference. I can think of three situations where our involvement with Shared Assessments and the CTPRP certification were helpful factors in securing major new customers.

You’ve encouraged your staff to earn the designation. How has the CTPRP experience helped them?
Maree Moscati: I immediately think of a senior operations manager on my team who earned the certification and who now attends Shared Assessments’ workshops and summit each year. He’s an excellent and eloquent writer, so he’s really helped us document policies and processes. The expertise he’s gained from his involvement with Shared Assessments has helped our firm keep pace with the growing number of questionnaires and audits we receive. He also provides guidance to our data and security team – even to our CISO – regarding what we need to focus on when we’re conducting due diligence on our own vendors. All of that has helped him advance his career here. I’m a big believer in organically grooming staff members to move up the ranks to more meaningful and challenging roles. The CTPRP and the continuing education have helped our people advance their careers while advancing the company’s capabilities.

Does the CTPRP help your company in any other ways?
Maree Moscati:  When I present to the board, I encourage our board members to challenge us on our information security and data privacy governance and protocols. I’ve even challenged some of them to get the designation because that additional expertise would only make us better as an organization. Most boards would benefit from having the expertise that the CTPRP teaches.

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