When safeguarding the enterprise against cyberattacks and data breaches, chief information security officers and compliance managers can choose from a wide range of information security controls, from firewalls to malware detection applications and more.
The different components of an enterprise’s cybersecurity program, such as access control, encryption, authentication, monitoring, incident response, perimeter defense, and risk management, are often recommended in a cybersecurity framework.
A compliance framework and a cybersecurity framework provide a common language that allows individuals from all areas of an organization to foster more secure and efficient business practices.
Compliance management assures that an organization’s policies and procedures conform to a specific set of laws, regulations, rules, or standards. Compliance is critical for trust, reputation, security, and data integrity, which all ultimately affect the bottom line.
Security compliance management is a specific subset of compliance management. It encompasses a minimum set of security requirements for data protection for organizations that store, process, or transmit that data. This process monitors and assesses systems, networks, and devices to comply with industry cybersecurity and compliance standards.
Noncompliance with regulations puts you and your customers at risk of security breaches, vulnerabilities, cyberattacks, and regulatory fines. For this reason, it’s essential to stay on top of security compliance management.
The Goals of Security Compliance
Security compliance management is the set of processes for continuous monitoring and evaluation of systems. These processes include the communication, documentation, and automation of information security compliance controls and procedures.
The goal is to comply with industry standards, regulatory requirements, security policies, and corporate interests.
Avoiding Regulatory Fines and Penalties
IT businesses should know the existing compliance obligations that pertain to their industry. Violations of these rules are punishable by fines and other punishments. Robust security compliance reduces the risks of these issues by effectively safeguarding their data. The most common compliance obligations include:
- European General Data Protection Act (GDPR)
- Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX)
- Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
- Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
- Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS)
Protecting Your Company’s Reputation
Data breaches harm a company’s brand and erode customer trust. Aside from the high costs and penalties involved with data breaches, businesses must be transparent and inform customers about the breach.
As organizations look for solutions to protect against data breaches, having efficient information security management tools is paramount to building loyalty and maintaining healthy relationships with customers and stakeholders.
Improve Data Management Capabilities
Maintaining data security compliance for most firms begins with properly managing sensitive information about customers.
Companies should consider upgrading systems that simplify the application programming interface (API) integration process. A more streamlined automation system allows for seamless authentications and less lag time between updates, translating into increased operational efficiency and continued attention to privacy.
What Are Security Compliance Management Challenges?
Some situations that can challenge security compliance management are:
- Changing security landscape and new regulations. Security threats and regulatory compliance rules evolve rapidly, requiring a quick response to new threats and changing laws.
- Distributed environments across many platforms. As IT infrastructures grow more dispersed between on-premises and cloud platforms, getting a holistic picture of your environment and vulnerabilities becomes more difficult.
- Manual processes. Managing compliance through spreadsheets, file shares, and documents made sense at one time, but these tools weren’t designed to keep up with ever-changing regulations. It can take hours to update every spreadsheet at each location manually to accommodate a single regulatory change.
- Multi-country presence. Many organizations do not exist within the confines of a single country. They may have branches in different countries. It is challenging to manage and comply with varying regulations in all the countries a company operates.
- Large teams. Coordination across an organization, cross-functionally and geographically, can be complicated in a large enterprise. Poor collaboration could also increase the risk of a data breach.
Best Practices for Security Compliance Management
No matter what rules you must follow, the following are some best practices to help your company enhance its security compliance management.
Implement a Cybersecurity Compliance Program
The best method to assure compliance is to develop a strategy that brings the IT, security, and compliance teams together. Stakeholders, a list of regulations to follow, and a detailed risk assessment should all be included in the strategy.
Promote Team Communication
Security compliance becomes more complicated when teams are siloed. The IT or security team is on the front lines of cyber security regarding breaches, attacks, and solutions to prevent them. They may, however, be unaware of the specifics of compliance and regulatory requirements.
Likewise, the compliance staff may be familiar with regulatory requirements but not familiar with current technology capabilities. Promote teamwork and collaboration to assure the best possible solutions are implemented to protect your organization’s best interests.
Automate Controls
As your organization expands, it is impossible to keep track of regulatory and security compliance effectively with manual processes. Automation allows you to focus on the big picture by streamlining daily chores, improving consistency, and ensuring regular monitoring and reporting.
Perform Consistent Patch Testing
Criminals are aware of patch release dates and anticipate that organizations will be late or miss their patching deadlines. As a result, critical faults and defects should be fixed as quickly as feasible. Before putting patched systems back into production, make sure they’re accepted.
Continuous Monitoring
Threats are constantly changing, and new risks often influence changes in rules and standards. Being aware of the specific dangers affecting your data and networks is critical. Continuous monitoring, ongoing education, and internal controls can help you stay on top of your infrastructure.
Connect Your Tools
Different management tools for each platform are standard in distributed environments. You can connect these tools via APIs. APIs allow you to conduct activities on various devices using your favorite interfaces. Using fewer interfaces enhances insight into all systems’ security and compliance status in your environment and streamlines operations.
Maintain Your Compliance with ZenComply
Instead of using spreadsheets to manage your compliance requirements, adopt Reciprocity ZenComply to streamline evidence and audit management for all of your compliance frameworks.
As part of the robust Reciprocity ROAR Platform, ZenComply’s compliance, risk, and workflow management software is intuitive and easy to use.
It provides a single source of truth that ensures your organization is always audit-ready. Policies and procedures are revision-controlled and easy to find in the document repository. Workflow management features offer easy tracking, automated reminders, and audit trails. Insightful reporting and dashboards give visibility to gaps and high-risk areas.
Worry-free compliance management is the Zen way! To see how ZenComply can streamline your compliance processes, contact us for a demo.
