Over the past few years, security compliance has become one of the top priorities of corporate boards. Increased cyber-attacks and hefty penalties by the regulatory bodies are some of the few reasons to get the security compliance piled to the overall corporate compliances. Be it GDPR, financial regulations, or regional compliances, security compliance has attracted enough attention to make them competent in today’s healthy competition.
As the world is embracing continuous technological shifts, organizations are facing a lot of data protection challenges due to emerging cyber security threats and vulnerabilities in their IT environment. There are several government, industry, and other regulations for any organization that determines the specific information security requirements. A clear understanding of security compliance and its applicability is very critical for the organization to decide the approach to follow the regulations.
There are a number of discussions that happen to decide on the responsibility of ensuring security compliance in an organization. Is it a specific function? Ideally, it’s everyone in an organization who directly or indirectly takes part in protecting the information thus making it compliant. However, there will be security governance and compliance function set up that maintains the entire lifecycle of the security compliance. Ensuring security compliance is a top agenda for corporates because of the following reasons:
Instances of the security compliance breach and penalties on the organizations:
There are various organizations across the globe belonging to different industry verticals that have faced hefty fines for non-compliance with applicable regulatory requirements. Few instances of non-compliance include:
A few examples of the security compliance requirement include:
- Notifying the regulatory bodies when security incidents occur within a stipulated time
- Taking reasonable steps toward consumer data protection, detecting data breach, and notifying customers on time.
- Public companies in the US must follow the disclosure requirements of cybersecurity risks and incidents
- Avoiding processing of the personal data without express consent of the customers
- Protecting the PII as per the regulatory requirement such as GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules etc
Challenges in maintaining security compliance
There are a number of security and data protection challenges for an organization that could result in either non-compliance or security imbalances. These include:
- Emerging security threats and vulnerabilities
- Rapid technological changes
- Understanding of the applicable security compliances
- Geographical spread of the organization and its data
- Large and complex infrastructure
- Lack of skilled manpower
- Lack of security governance
- Lack of visibility in IT outsourcing to multiple third parties
Conclusion
Security compliance is one of the top priorities for corporate boards irrespective of its scale and geographical presence. Adhering to the applicable regulations increases the control on the operations, protects the data, and helps gain customers’ trust globally. Security compliance is dependent on continuous monitoring due to the frequent and rapid transition to digital approaches. Failure to comply with regulatory requirements will attract substantial penalties or fines and the loss of reputation which no organization looks forward to.
