Compliance automation uses technology to automate compliance processes that employees had previously done manually.
It is powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and uses cutting-edge technology to make compliance procedures easier. Automation assures that compliance activities happen when appropriate – namely, as soon as regulatory requirements come along.
Compliance automation technology empowers businesses to streamline compliance-related workflows, such as risk assessments, control evaluations, testing, and corrective action planning.
Automation tools operate based on a company’s security frameworks and compliance requirements. The compliance regulations that relate to an organization’s industry, configurations, accounts, inventories, and security procedures are copied into the compliance automation software to identify violations.
How Do You Automate a Compliance Process?
One way to automate a compliance process is workflow automation for compliance. This allows you to program software to follow rules-based instructions to perform an entire task without human intervention.
Automation streamlines business processes. For example, rather than updating tasks manually, the software can automatically renew and track outstanding items. It only alerts you based on your pre-set rules.
The best-automated compliance management tools – those specially designed to replace spreadsheets – evolve into a single source of truth for your compliance program and your organization. In addition, those tools can be a repository for all your compliance data, so you don’t make decisions based on incomplete, outdated, or erroneous information.
Why automation? Because it can provide peace of mind by tracking all compliance issues and activities in one place: industry regulations, policy management, standards, contracts, and clauses that may have once resided within web browser bookmarks, word documents, and spreadsheets.
What Are Examples of Regulatory Compliance?
Companies that process sensitive data can significantly benefit and save time when implementing automated compliance management systems.
Since regulatory requirements and laws are often updated, automating compliance processes provides more accurate information for internal auditors and senior leadership. For instance, in healthcare, HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) requirements are often evolving.
Automated notification of those changes, via specialized tools, helps to avoid non-compliance.
Organizations looking for an effective way to implement a robust information security management system and keep costs low should automate their governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) systems.
Regulatory technology firms provide solutions that help organizations manage their regulatory processes to meet compliance obligations. The demand for “regtech” is increasing as organizations become more aware of how compliance automation can mitigate the risk of fines from regulatory breaches.
The COVID-19 pandemic also made it more difficult for employees to stay on top of every compliance detail, causing the demand for compliance automation tools to accelerate dramatically.
What Does Compliance Automation Enable?
Compliance automation tools allow organizations to remain compliant and avoid potential penalties and other financial consequences – and to do those things in a more efficient manner. When the compliance team isn’t consumed with manual processes, they can focus on more sophisticated, intensive compliance tasks, such as drafting new policies.
What Is Compliance Automation Software?
By automating the time-consuming manual procedures generally involved in compliance management, compliance automation software keeps track of a company’s internal systems and controls to verify conformity with the necessary standards and industry regulations.
Many compliance management software solutions allow continuous monitoring, simplify evidence collection across multiple frameworks, track compliance training, and provide user-friendly integrations with other common tools to drive adoption within the organization.
The best compliance software offers built-in content for common standards, such as HIPAA, GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard), and NIST (National Institute for Standards and Technology). These software tools drive notifications to compliance personnel when standards change and escalations for compliance gaps.
Compliance management software simplifies the sometimes tricky process of establishing and maintaining compliance considerations with necessary standards and laws. In addition, tools with built-in continuous monitoring and alerting can help an organization’s overall security posture.
Benefits of Using Automation Software
Business process automation is the secret to achieving your organization’s goals with the least amount of monitoring and the most effectiveness.
Many of your manual operations, such as routing policies and procedures for approval, prioritizing corrective actions, and collecting data from operational reports, take up valuable time and can result in human error. Your overall organizational productivity will undoubtedly suffer as a result, given that your competitors are continuously innovating to work more quickly.
There are many significant benefits of automation to consider:
- More cost-effective than manual workflows
- Availability of compliance status and risk stance from a central dashboard
- Improved risk management decision-making with real-time data
- Continuous verification of compliance requirements, management of third-party risks, and identification of potential vulnerabilities
- Reduced the likelihood of security breaches
- Fewer reporting mistakes
- Improved accuracy and compliance reporting
ZenComply Helps Businesses to Automate Compliance Processes
ZenComply’s regulatory compliance management solution is an intuitive platform that identifies areas of concern before compliance risks manifest as real threats. It’s a scalable SaaS platform for small businesses or large enterprises.
ZenComply’s workflow management features include a single dashboard that documents your control efficacy in real-time, making compliance paperwork a breeze. It also aids in creating audit trails so that you can back up your answers to auditor questions. Templates drive efficiencies for audit management, self-assessments and vendor questionnaires.
Built-in content is managed by our compliance and cybersecurity experts, so your team is always up-to-date with the latest regulatory requirements. ZenComply’s single source of information accelerates internal and external stakeholder communications with insightful reporting.
Contact us for a demo to see how ZenComply can help improve your business operations and compliance management.
