Assure Professional – A Certified Public Accounting Firm With Offices In Green Bay, WI, Tampa, FL Charlotte, NC, Houston, TX

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Below is our recent interview with Chris Fameree and Juan Vargas from Assure Professional:

Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to Assure Professional?

A: Assure Professional is a certified public accounting firm with offices in Green Bay, WI, Tampa, FL Charlotte, NC, Houston, TX and employees working virtual in various locations. We were formed in November 2011 partially because we identified a more efficient process to complete SOC 1/SOC 2 audits. We identified a better way of engaging the client and improving the audit experience while simplifying a traditionally stressful and complicated process by applying technology. Our main focus is on providing service organizational control audits.

Since then we have expanded our offerings to include audits of several other standards including HITRUST, HIPAA assessments, ISO 27001, NIST, amongst others.

We now employ staff throughout the United States boasting large firm experience while still providing economical and efficient services. For the current year we anticipate completing in excess of 100 engagements and continually working to enhance our services while providing
valuable feedback to our clients.

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Q: Can you give us insights into your services?

A: Our primarily focus is on providing service organizational control audits. We provide third party audit services for i) SOC 1/SOC 2/SOC 3 ii) HITRUST iii) HIPAA assessments, iv) ISO 27001, iv) NIST and others.

Industries services vary widely from collection companies to software as a service businesses to managed service providers.

Leveraging our Managing Partners prior experience, we also provide merger and acquisition services and strategic CFO services. This includes buy side/sell side quality of earnings reports and modeling/budgeting automation and assistance.

Q: How does your audit tool make an audit more efficient?

A: The SOC 1/SOC 2 audit process (as well as the process for other standards) can be time consuming on the client and it impacts the operations by taxing internal resources. Our audit tool seeks to reduce the impact to business operations by clearly identifying the information required to validate that any control being audited. This clarification reduces the back and forth communication, and allows for a methodical and structured audit. In addition, our software allows the client to internally delegate tasks by assigning items to various team members so multiple employees can be completing assignments simultaneously.

Q: Is the client able to track the status and progress of the audit?

A: The control audit tool (for SOC 1/SOC 2 and other standards) lists the number of total tasks that need to be completed. A progress indicator bar shows the total number of tasks vs those that are completed. At anytime the client can view what tasks are open, what tasks have been submitted for review and what tasks have been completed. The client also has the ability to recall a task at any time should they want to add additional evidence or clarification to the item being evaluated. For tasks assigned to direct reports and employees, completion and open items can be monitored by staff.

Q: What makes you stand out from your competition?

A: Our investment in technology to make the audit process a pleasant and structured process for our clients. Others utilize technology through a collection of multiple tools such as a file sharing portal, excel and email. We remove the multiple applications and provide a single platform to gather and evaluate the subject matter. This allows us to conduct multiple engagement standards simultaneously for any client, for example, we can conduct a SOC 2, ISO 27001 and HIPAA audit all at the same time. Our tool leverages the audit criteria that is common across the different standards and those that are unique by providing 1 comprehensive task list. “Test Once, Comply Many”. Our goal is to provide the most value added, efficient and economical audit process possible while ensuring clients are meeting the objectives of the applicable standards.

We also combine large firm experience with small firm client service. Our partners and employees have Big 4 and large regional firm experience. With Assure, you have consistent direct access to our Partners and Senior Managers and these individuals will be intimately involved in each engagement.

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Q: What are your plans for the future?

A: We are committed to improving our audit tool and expanding it to assist our clients with their internal governance, risk and compliance requirements by providing a platform that allows for continuous monitoring and improvement of their internal control environment while adhering to required security and regulatory frameworks.

We are focused on expanding our services across other frameworks/standards while providing the same quality of service.