The Regulatory Burden

Cybersecurity in the manufacturing industry is more important than ever before. To stay globally competitive, manufacturing companies rely on data and information, and are using devices and sensors both within factories and throughout their supply chains.

This has brought an increase in the number of cyber attacks targeted at the manufacturing industry – from ransomware to business email compromise and more – and a growing need for manufacturers to defend their assets from disclosure, modification, disruption, or improper use.

From a regulatory perspective, manufacturers face data privacy requirements for the personal data they keep on employees and third parties. They also need strong assurance over the security of subcontractors, technology vendors and other business partners that might touch the company’s valuable intellectual property.

Additionally, manufacturers have reporting requirements around product safety from agencies such as the Consumer Products Safety Commission and environmental, health and safety standards from agencies such as OSHA or the EPA. If that data is stored or processed with outside technology vendors, the security of those vendors must be assured.

Manufacturers have a significant cyber security and regulatory burden—they have diverse requirements that span across different types of data and risk.

Instead of manual workflows, which are often extremely cumbersome and rife with inaccuracy, manufacturers need a unified risk and compliance solution to help assess and reduce cyber risk, identify and manage all of their compliance requirements and implement data privacy best practices.

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A Framework for Information Security Success

As manufacturing relies heavily on subcontractors and other outsiders, risk assessment and monitoring of third parties can quickly get very complex.

For example, the data they collect can be regulated by any number of data privacy laws such as HIPAA, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and state breach disclosure laws.

Fortunately, there are also numerous frameworks that can help these organizations to better protect their data and protect themselves from third-party risk.

Suppliers to the Defense Department, for example, can enlist the NIST cybersecurity standards to maintain DFARS compliance and their eligibility to bid on government contracts. Furthermore, they can use that guidance to extend security throughout their supply chain.

Manage Compliance and Risk with Confidence and Ease

Our solutions can empower risk and compliance officers with a centralized, integrated dashboard that notifies you of your real-time risk and compliance postures across the organization and provides the valuable insight you can use to mitigate risk.

Through automation, you can connect your existing tools and streamline workflows to reduce those time-consuming manual tasks. ZenGRC handles much of your risk and compliance tasks for you so you can build your risk management program faster and achieve your risk management objectives with ease.

Tame complexity by using automatically generated mappings that enable a single control to share evidence requirements across numerous frameworks, saving you time and resources that can be dedicated to mission-critical tasks that grow the business.

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Risk and Compliance Objectives

As stated previously, risk management frameworks exist to help manufacturers address cyber risk and regulatory compliance objectives.

However, risk and compliance officers need to simultaneously manage multiple frameworks to achieve progress on multiple needs, each moving at its own pace. This makes a manual approach, using spreadsheets and other legacy methods unscalable as your business grows.

With ZenGRC’s built-in content, workflows, seeded inherent and target risk scores and actionable guidance, you can:

  • Assess your information security posture of both your systems and any third-party vendors
  • Identify those security gaps that must be filled to meet regulatory requirements
  • Establish the corrective steps and security controls necessary to fill those gaps
  • Assign those corrective steps to control owners
  • Understand and respond to any new assessments that might be necessary as regulatory requirements evolve

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Frequently Asked Questions

There are many industries that face cyber risk and regulatory compliance obligations. In manufacturing, organizations face both regulatory compliance and corporate compliance requirements along with the critical need to secure the IoT technologies across the organization and its supply chain.

While regulatory compliance relates to the state, federal and international regulations that impact a manufacturer’s operations, corporate compliance refers to the company’s internal procedures and policies, as well as any federal or state laws that impact the manufacturer’s internal operations.

Both businesses and consumers rely on products developed by manufacturers. Those manufacturers achieving risk management and compliance objectives protect product users as much as it protects the manufacturer itself. Their risk and compliance program provides users reassurance that the products they buy and use are safe and responsibly sourced.

While an organization’s exact program will be dependent upon the nature of their business, where they operate and what they produce, there are some simple tips that can help them get started on the right foot.

  1. Determine the scope of your compliance requirements

    • The most prominent regulatory agencies for the manufacturing industry include OSHA, HACCP, FDA, EPA and ISO
  2. Determine your goals and any existing gaps

    • Again, a tool like the RiskOptics ROAR Platform can help you quickly identify your compliance and risk gaps and tell you how to fill them so you can jumpstart your program
  3. Assess Your Risks

    • In addition to your baseline compliance obligations, your organization will also face unique risks related to the scope of your business. Addressing your compliance objectives doesn’t necessarily mean all your risks will also be addressed. Thus, it’s important to evaluate what those risks are and ensure you have the controls in place to mitigate any unacceptable risks
  4. Take Action

    • Once you understand your compliance gaps and remaining risks, it’s now time to implement a plan of action and assign roles and responsibilities. The RiskOptics ROAR Platform can help you define this plan and automate tasks so you can focus on business growth, instead of task follow-up
  5. Provide Risk and Compliance Training to Employees

    • A compliance and risk management program is only as strong as those team members that uphold security controls over time, so make sure that awareness and training are part of your compliance program