In this day and age, cybersecurity is more critical than ever. Especially when cyber threats and data breaches increase drastically, enterprises must take necessary precautions and secure their network. Along with security, compliance is another mandatory asset for companies. Compliance ensures adherence to regulations and security standards and prepares the ground for further protective measures, solutions, and practices for companies.
In fact, compliance still appears to be the top business priority according to Forbes.
However, compliance isn’t always an indication of a company being secure. In other words, only being compliant with regulations and standards is inadequate for securing company assets and data. Companies shouldn’t ensure compliance for the sake of avoiding fines. There is more to security than compliance. This includes determining security risks and vulnerabilities and safeguarding every corner of company networks – both internally and externally – with necessary solutions and practices.
On the other hand, security solely focuses on the protection of information and data assets. The cybersecurity of companies incorporates numerous components and assets such as encryption, access management, monitoring, risk management, incident response, and many more. For the security of company networks and data, a variety of different information security controls and applications.
Security compliance management combines these two areas to protect information assets and adhere to relevant regulations at the same time. Security compliance management aims to enhance information and data management capabilities, avoiding fines and penalties by conforming to standards and regulations. In this sense, let’s understand how exactly security compliance manages protection against cyber threats.
What is Security Compliance Management?
In order to explain what role security compliance play in mitigating cyber threats, we need to have a fundamental knowledge of what it really is. Security compliance management is a collection of operations that includes continuous system monitoring and risk assessments. Its operations incorporate documentation, communication, and automation of specific information controls.
Security compliance management ensures company policies for data protection comply with necessary regulations and standards which are specific to their operations. It applies to every company that handles data. Because security compliance management contains security requirements for stored, shared, or transmitted data. By fulfilling a minimum set of security requirements, security compliance management monitors and assesses systems and processes to both secure company assets and conform to regulations. In this sense, compliance feeds and sets the ground for the security of organizations.
Also, it must be noted that compliance frameworks don’t encompass protective measures and standards against all security risks. That’s the reason why one framework can’t mitigate all cyber threats and security risks for every company. Security compliance frameworks differ depending on many aspects such as the industry, location, nature of business, services, and products. Still, security compliance frameworks establish a solid foundation for extra protective measures and security practices of companies according to assessed risks.
The most common security compliance frameworks are HIPAA, NIST, GDPR, PCI-DSS, ISO 27001, and ISO 27002. For specific industries, compliance is far stricter. So, complying with each one of the related security compliance frameworks is necessary. Otherwise, your organization will be liable for any data breach and invasion of privacy due to not adhering to regulations and receive fines. So, a potential data breach will cost your company much more due to penalties and fines along with reputational damage. Also, poor compliance will lead to inefficient and insecure systems. For further information about security compliance and the risks the lack thereof brings, read more.
How Security Compliance Helps Mitigating Cyber Threats
Since security compliance regards a set of security requirements and practices set by regulations, it constructs a healthy foundation to fight against a variety of potential cyber threats. Regulations involve articles and recitals formed around:
- Data security
- Accountability and governance
- Lawful basis and transparency
- Processing of different types of personal data
- Privacy rights and standards
If followed appropriately, compliance management with a focal point of security is easier to build and maintain. In addition, these regulations give harsh penalties to those who violate its clauses to reduce data breaches and their impact and protect the personal information of individuals.
For instance, one of the strictest regulations is GDPR. Everywhere around the world, organizations that target and collect data belonging to citizens in the EU are subjected to obligations imposed by GDPR. Currently, the violations of its standards can reach up to tens of millions of euros.
Also, cybersecurity compliance directs organizations about precautions needed to be taken within internal procedures in a pre-breach period. Both a pre-breach and a post-breach mandatory plan are established to keep the data breach probability minimal and communicate the impact of a data breach to affected parties. As a result, security compliance helps organizations assess risks and mitigate cyber threats and data breaches while building a protective framework.
Just Compliance Isn’t Enough
Solely depending on compliance can negatively affect your company because compliance only sets a baseline of mandatory security requirements and the focus is on a legal level. Following compliance frameworks are necessary for companies. Adherence to industry-accepted security frameworks adds great value to companies.
But security is a critical component for every business and needs ongoing efforts to continuously improve its strength and mitigate current vulnerabilities. Against constantly evolving cyber risks and sophisticated attacks, new or enhanced security solutions are being developed and implemented. Constant penetration tests, security audits, incident response, and other security-related tests should be conducted. The results of these risk assessments determine how and which parts of the infrastructure should be strengthened.
Final Remarks
Security and compliance are among the top priorities for businesses. Also, they are critical components for business sustainability, reliability, and security. These two vital components are combined under one solution — which is security compliance management. Security compliance management performs monitoring and risk assessments for securing information assets while maintaining compliance with industry security regulations, standards, and frameworks. So, companies no longer have to consider these critical aspects separately. But security always must be enhanced through various solutions and practices. That’s the only way to construct security centered approach to mitigating cyber threats and not just avoid fines with compliance.
