What Does It Mean to be Compliant?

What Does It Mean to be Compliant?

Many businesses that operate in an industry with compliance requirements have often found themselves on the wrong side of the law due to non-compliance. According to a Globalscape report, companies have lost an average of 5,107,206 US Dollars due to business disruption resulting from non-compliance.

Many other businesses have fallen victim to the law having to pay hefty fines most of the time.  But what exactly does it mean to be compliant?

Check out our latest video to learn about compliance:

What Is Compliance?

Compliance refers to ensuring that your company follows all the regulations and laws that govern how you manage the business. These regulations will vary depending on your industry, structure of your business, location. These rules are often established by a governing body, the state, or a federal agency. It is essential to get industry-specific compliance since risks can be very different.

What are some of the examples of these industry regulations?

• The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) prohibits disclosing sensitive patient health data without the patient’s consent.
• The Federal Information Security Management Act(FISMA): It requires federal agencies to establish, document, and implement an information security and protection program.
• The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS): This outlines the procedure all companies must follow when processing, transmitting, and storing a consumer’s debit or credit card information.

In the information technology landscape, compliance typically involves data security.

The Convergence of Compliance and Security: As businesses continue to adopt remote working to keep up with the changing business environment, data protection has become a crucial regulatory requirement. As the number and severity of cyberattacks continue to increase, regulation authorities and governments continually seek to establish more efficient and rigid compliance requirements.

Cybersecurity compliance involves generating a program that establishes security controls, often enacted by a regulatory body to protect the integrity, and confidentiality, of processed, stored, or transferred data.

How Can Your Business Embrace Cyber-Security Compliant? Is your company thinking about compliance and is stuck?  The following steps will guide you through the process of becoming compliant.

• You Need to Determine What Regulations You Should Comply With Before Anything Else: The type of data you process and store will determine the regulations that your company needs to comply with, depending on your industry. Some of these compliance requirements vary in every state, but some apply regardless of your company’s location.

• Hire Compliance Experts: The complexity that comes with regulatory compliance requires high levels of expertise. These experts should familiarize themselves with all the departments in your company to help cover all conceivable areas of risk in the company.

• Conduct a Comprehensive Risk Analysis: Your compliance team should carry out a comprehensive analysis of your current cybersecurity situation. The team should then suggest measures that need to be modified to ensure data security.

• Implement Security Controls: Implement security controls and cyber-security regulations based on the results of your risk assessment. These controls should include encryption of data, firewall configuration, and the installation of anti-virus software.

• Develop and communicate a compliance policy: Once you have put these systems in place, an internal policy should be formulated and communicated throughout your organization.

• Frequently Conduct Auditing of Your Compliance Programs: Since the compliance landscape is continually changing, it’s vital to review your systems frequently to ensure that you remain compliant.

Are You Looking For an I.T. Partner To Help You With Compliance?

At Technology Advisory Group, we offer years of expertise and experience in providing regulatory and industry compliant services to organizations across Rhodes Island and New England.

Consult with us today to get customized compliance solutions that enhance your data’s security and keep your business running smoothly.