Cybersecurity compliance can be confusing, especially when organisations are faced with a glut of regulations, standards, audits and technical requirements. But the heart of the concept is fairly straightforward: businesses need to understand what information they have, how they handle it, and whether their processes satisfy the requirements that apply to them.
For many organisations, the most difficult part is not knowing the regulations. It’s knowing their own environment first of all. With data spread across databases, cloud platforms, apps, shared folders and employee systems, it’s hard to know exactly what needs your attention.
That is why a good compliance process begins with knowing what you own.
What Is Cybersecurity Compliance?
Cybersecurity compliance means adhering to the rules, regulations, and industry norms that govern how an organization manages information and technology.
The requirements may vary based on the industry, location and type of information dealt with by the business.
For instance, a healthcare organization might have requirements for patient information, and a financial organization might have requirements for financial and customer records.
Most compliance efforts have something in common, though the specific requirements vary: Businesses need to understand their information and demonstrate they are managing it correctly
Why Cybersecurity Compliance Matters for Businesses
Compliance is more than just passing an audit.
Good compliance practices help businesses to understand their responsibilities, improve internal processes and build trust with customers and partners.
It can also help organisations spot gaps before they turn into bigger problems.
For growing businesses, this becomes especially important. The amount of information that an organization manages can grow quickly as new employees, applications, cloud services, customers and business processes are added.
Without regular reviews companies can lose sight of what information they have and where it is.
What Are the Main Cybersecurity Compliance Requirements?
There’s no universal checklist that applies to all businesses.
But many compliance frameworks focus on areas such as:
- Detection and handling of sensitive data
- Regulating access to sensitive systems and records
- Maintaining proper policies and procedures
- Business process monitoring and analysis
- Maintaining proper records
- Data retention handling
- Periodic assessments
- Reporting and resolving compliance issues
The specific requirements depend on the regulation or standard in question.
That’s why businesses should first understand which requirements apply to them, rather than trying to follow every available framework.
Which Regulations and Standards Should Businesses Know?
Compliance requirements vary by industry and geography.
Depending on the organization, you may encounter some of the following regulations and standards: GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOC 2, ISO 27001, and India’s DPDP Act.
These frameworks don’t all cover the same things. Some are around privacy, some are around information security controls, some are around showing that an organization has the right processes in place.
The point is to determine what requirements are applicable to your business, and not to impose compliance in a one size fits all manner.
What Information Should Businesses Identify First?
To handle compliance requirements, companies must first know what information they actually hold.
This may include:
- Customer details
- Records of employees
- Financial data
- Health data
- Identification information
- Business and contracts documents
- Payment Information
- Company confidential information
The problem is that this information may not be kept in one place.
It might be in databases, cloud storage, SaaS applications, email, shared folders, spreadsheets, and other business systems.
Data discovery helps organisations find where this information lives and data classification helps them understand what type of information they are working with.
EzSecure, for example, can assist organisations in identifying and classifying sensitive information across multiple data environments, providing teams with improved visibility into where sensitive data is located.
Why Data Visibility Matters for Compliance
You can’t effectively manage information you are unaware of.
Now imagine a company that is trying to meet regulation standards but customer data is spread out in different cloud platforms, old spreadsheets, shared directories, and databases.
Although the company may have sound policies, it is likely still having a hard time verifying that these policies are implemented uniformly throughout the rest of the company’s data.
Data visibility is exactly the kind of tool you’d need here.
Being able to see clearly exactly where confidential data resides can help organizations pinpoint areas that need attention, grasp the overall data situation, and finally, make informed choices as to how they should handle the information.
Common Cybersecurity Compliance Mistakes Businesses Make
Sometimes compliance problems aren’t caused by ignoring regulations but by doing your regular business without thinking how it relates to the law.
Common mistakes:
Considering compliance as the completion of one project
Compliance work must not be done once and then forgotten. It requires continuous monitoring as external business conditions keep varying.
Inability to identify the stores of sensitive information
Organizations may have implemented various controls, but they are still unaware of where exactly their sensitive data is.
Storing redundant data
Organizations continue to have irrelevant files and data in their systems after the data’s usefulness has expired. It is therefore important to check on the data on a continuous basis to know whether it is still relevant.
Complete reliance on manual processing
To manually scan through large volumes of documents and data is extremely time-consuming and would not only cause a bottleneck but also hinder the ability to track things if the company grows.
Only concentrating on audits
If an organization prepares only close to the time when it receives an audit, there will probably be a very high level of stress involved. It is far preferable to take a continuous approach as it is easier to handle.
How Businesses Can Build a Better Compliance Process
Besides technology, you can also take advantage of a practical compliance solution.
One simple step is for companies to identify all applicable laws and regulations. Once they know that, they can see what kinds of information the requirements cover and where that information is located in the company:
Continuous data discovery, classification, and review will then allow companies to maintain visibility in face of business development.
Compliance doesn’t mean just collecting paper. On the contrary, having a solid understanding of the relationship between your requirements, and the data stored in your company, would be your ideal situation.
Final Thoughts
Cybersecurity compliance can be a regulation and standard game. It also includes audits and technical requirements. However, it is possible for organizations to find an easy way to do it and not see it as a complex, difficult or daunting task.
Get grounded.
Clarify for yourselves the requirements you have to follow, the data you own, the location of that data, and the parts of that data which are the most delicate and require the highest degree of protection.
Once you have a clear picture of your data environment, the task of compliance becomes more manageable. You will not only benefit from having your company’s data under surveillance, but also being able to prepare yourselves better with business growth so that instead of always struggling to keep up, you can focus on being ready.
In other words, starting with getting a clear understanding of the scope is the first step.
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