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A Case Study Overview—ECS Leverages BARR’s Coordinated Audit Approach to Streamline SOC, ISO, HITRUST, and PCI DSS Compliance

April 10, 2025 | HITRUST, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, SOC 2

ECS is a leading provider of solutions in science, engineering, and advanced technologies, including cloud, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence (AI), and data. Committed to maintaining the highest standards of security and compliance, ECS has partnered with BARR to take a proactive approach to compliance, ensuring its clients can rely on a secure, resilient, and future-ready cybersecurity infrastructure.

Here’s how they’re leveraging BARR’s coordinated audit approach to build trust with customers across a diverse range of industries in the U.S. public and private sectors.

The Challenge

ECS’s compliance journey began in 2018 with a clear objective: to establish a strong security foundation that would support its rapid growth while meeting clients’ evolving expectations. 

ECS first pursued ISO 27001 as its foundational certification, then layered additional frameworks—including SOC 1, SOC 2, HITRUST, and PCI DSS—on top of it. This multi-framework approach allowed ECS to meet client requirements across a diverse range of industries while demonstrating its commitment to security. However, as the number of required certifications grew, so did the complexity of maintaining compliance.  

The challenge lay in streamlining the audit process while ensuring that compliance efforts did not become a burden on internal teams. Managing audits for multiple standards simultaneously—some with more than 200 controls in scope—posed a significant administrative challenge. 

ECS needed a solution that would reduce inefficiencies, minimize disruptions, and provide clarity across its organization, while helping their team stay ahead of new regulations and evolving security threats.

The Solution

To address these challenges, ECS partnered with BARR Advisory, leveraging BARR’s coordinated audit approach to streamline the auditing process and accelerate the timeline to compliance. By conducting a single, integrated audit that covered multiple frameworks, BARR helped ECS reduce redundancies and optimize resources.  

“It doesn’t feel like we’re just talking in silos,” said Steve Ryan, senior manager of attest services at BARR Advisory. “The goal is [for organizations] to feel as though we’re just having a conversation [about] security, and then on the back side, the onus is on us to map them out to the different frameworks.”

By reducing the administrative burden of compliance, ECS was able to focus its efforts on strengthening security measures rather than navigating complex audit logistics. With clear expectations, team members are empowered to embrace cybersecurity best practices year-round.

“Not only does it relieve or reduce some of that administrative burden, but it also helps engrain the security into our culture here at ECS,” said Sydney Will, GRC project manager at ECS. 

The Results

By consolidating multiple audits into a single, streamlined process, ECS has:  

  • Streamlined compliance: BARR’s coordinated audit approach reduces administrative burden by eliminating redundancies and improving efficiency throughout the auditing process.
  • Maintained a competitive edge: Achieving compliance with frameworks including ISO 27001, SOC 1, SOC 2, HITRUST, and PCI DSS helps ECS stay ahead of competitors.
  • Strengthened its security culture: Teams follow a predictable audit cadence, reducing disruptions to daily operations while weaving compliance into the organizational culture.
  • Established itself as a market leader: Meeting top security standards strengthens ECS’s credibility and industry standing.

“It really does just put us in more of a competitive space within the industry,” Will said. “We do maintain many other standards as well…all of that gives ECS a competitive edge, and it has allowed us to grow as a GRC department and have that collaboration and that trust in each other.”

Ready to take the next step in your compliance journey? Schedule a free consultation today.

*BARR Certifications is the certifying body that provided the ISO 27001 audit.

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