Incorporating robust cybersecurity measures and solutions has become more critical with the ever-evolving and ever-growing number of cyberattacks. Cybercriminals employ advanced tactics to breach network data, costing businesses billions of dollars.
According to cybersecurity statistics, around 2,200 cyber attacks happen daily, and the total cybercrime cost is estimated to reach a whopping $8 trillion by the end of 2023.
This makes it imperative for organizations to enforce cybersecurity solutions to prevent online attacks and breaches.
And with the increasing cybersecurity solution enforcement, organizations need to comply with specific cybersecurity compliance depending on their industry that drives the organization’s security goals and success.
Cybersecurity compliance is paramount to the organization’s capability of protecting data, building customer trust, enforcing security, and avoiding financial losses.
However, with the increasing compliance regulations, organizations find it challenging to stay ahead of cyberattacks and data breaches. This is where cybersecurity compliance software plays a crucial role.
Different cybersecurity compliance software and tools are available in the market that helps organizations ensure security adherence and requirements and mitigate security risks.
In this article, we’ll comprehensively look at what cybersecurity compliance software is, its benefits, and the different compliance tools available to strengthen your organization’s compliance needs.
What is Cybersecurity Compliance and Its Importance?
Cybersecurity compliance ensures that organizations adhere to the essential regulatory and established standards to secure computer networks from cybersecurity threats.
Compliance regulations help organizations follow state and national-level cybersecurity laws and protect sensitive data and information.
In simple words, cybersecurity compliance is one of the risk management processes that’s aligned with pre-defined security measures and ensures organizations follow the cybersecurity checklists and rules.
Cybersecurity compliance is essential for organizations. It not only helps organizations meet security regulations but also strengthens security management.
Here are some benefits of cybersecurity compliance for organizations:
- Avoid regulatory fines and penalties associated with not complying with security regulations.
- Improve data security and management capabilities.
- Streamlines the best industry-standard security practices, making assessing risks easier, minimizing errors, and building stronger customer relationships.
- Promote operational efficiency by making managing excess data easier, fixing security loopholes, and minimizing data usage.
- Develop a stronger brand reputation, authoritativeness, and customer trust.
Common Cybersecurity Compliance Regulations
Different regulatory requirements are applied depending on the type of industry and the kind of data the business or organization stores.
The primary goal of each compliance regulation is to ensure data security of personal data, like name, mobile number, bank details, social security numbers, date of birth details, and more that cybercriminals can use to exploit and gain unauthorized network access.
Here are the common compliance regulations that help organizations from different sectors remain compliant with the best security standards.
#1. HIPAA
HIPAA, or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, covers sensitive health-related data and information, ensuring integrity, confidentiality, and availability of Protected Health Information (PHI).
It requires healthcare organizations, providers, and clearinghouses to comply with the HIPAA privacy standards. This compliance requirement ensures organizations and business associates don’t disclose critical and confidential information without the individual’s consent.
Since HIPAA is the U.S. federal Statute signed into law in 1996, the rule doesn’t apply to organizations outside the United States.
#2. PCI-DSS
PCI-DSS, or the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, is a non-federal data security compliance requirement implemented to enable credit card security controls and data protection.
It requires businesses and organizations that handle payment transactions and information to comply with 12 security standard requirements, including firewall configuration, data encryption, password protection, and more.
Organizations typically target organizations without PCI-DSS, resulting in financial penalties and reputational damages.
#3. GDPR
The General Data Protection Regulation, short for GDPR, is a data security, protection, and privacy law published in 2016 for European Economic Area (EEA) and European Union (EU) countries.
This compliance requirement provides terms and conditions concerning customer data collection, enabling consumers to manage confidential data with no restrictions.
#4. ISO/IEC 27001
ISO/IEC 27001 is an international regulatory standard to manage and implement Information Security Management System (ISMS) belonging to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
All the organizations complying with this compliance regulation must adhere to compliance at every technology environment level, including employees, tools, processes, and systems. This system helps ensure customer data integrity and security.
#5. FERPA
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, short for FERPA, is a U.S. federal regulation that ensures that the student’s data and private details are secure and private.
It applies to all U.S. Department of Education (DOE) funded educational institutions.
How to Achieve/Implement Cybersecurity Compliance?
Achieving or implementing cybersecurity compliance isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution, as different industries must comply with different regulations and requirements.
However, here are some of the common and basic steps you can take to achieve cybersecurity compliance at your organization or business.
#1. Create a Compliance Team
Forming a dedicated compliance team is an essential and foremost step toward implementing cybersecurity compliance at any organization.
Pressuring your IT teams with all the cybersecurity solutions isn’t ideal. Instead, independent teams and workflows should be assigned clear responsibilities and ownership to maintain a responsive, updated, and agile solution for fighting cyberattacks and malicious threats.
#2. Establish Risk Analysis
Implementing and reviewing a risk analysis process will help your organization identify what’s working and not working for its security and compliance.
Here are the basic risk analysis steps every organization must establish:
- Identification of critical information systems, networks, and assets organizations have access to.
- Assessment of the risks of each data type and location where confidential data is stored, collected, and transmitted.
- Analysis of the risk impact using the formula risk = (breach likelihood x impact)/cost.
- Setting risk controls: Prioritize and organize the risks by transferring, refusing, accepting, and mitigating the risks.
#3. Set Security Controls or Monitor and Transfer Risks
The next step is setting up security controls that help mitigate cybersecurity risks and online threats. These controls can be physical, like fences or surveillance cameras, or technical controls, like access controls and passwords.
A few examples of these security controls include
- Network firewalls
- Data encryption
- Password policies
- Employee training
- Network access control
- Incident response plan
- Firewalls
- Insurance
- Patch management schedule
Setting up these data privacy and cybersecurity measures is crucial to mitigate risks and cybersecurity threats.
#4. Create Policies and Procedures
Once you set up the security controls, the next step is documenting the policies and procedures regarding these controls. This can include guidelines for the employees, IT teams, and other stakeholders must follow or the processes that outline and establish clear security programs.
Documenting such critical policies and procedures help organizations align, audit, and revise their cybersecurity compliance requirements.
#4. Monitor and Respond
Lastly, it’s essential to consistently monitor your organization’s compliance programs with the updating and emerging new compliance regulations and requirements.
This active monitoring makes it easier to enable continuous revisions of the regulations that paid off, areas of improvement, identify and manage new risks, and implement the required changes.
Challenges of Achieving Cybersecurity Compliance
Several organizations struggle to commit to and comply with compliance regulations because of the major challenges.
Here are some of those challenges mentioned organizations face when ensuring cybersecurity compliance.
Challenge 1: The Increasing and Expanding Attack Surface
The growing adoption of cloud technology expands the attack surface, providing cybercriminals and attackers with a larger attack vector, enabling them to find new ways and opportunities to exploit data and network vulnerabilities.
One of the major challenges organizations face is staying ahead of these cybersecurity threats and consistently updating security measures to mitigate risks. Implementing risk assessments that measure compliance and regulation violations without the right cybersecurity solution is highly challenging.
Challenge 2: System Complexity
Modern organizations and corporate environments with multi-tiered and globally located infrastructures are complicated without compliance regulations and cybersecurity solutions in themselves.
Moreover, the regulatory requirement varies depending on the industry, as organizations must comply with multiple regulations, like PCI-DSS, HIPAA, and GDPR, which can get time-consuming and overwhelming.
Challenge 3: The Non-scalable Nature of Some Cybersecurity Solutions
With organizations scaling their processes and infrastructures to the cloud environment, conventional cybersecurity measures and solutions often lag.
As the cybersecurity solutions can’t be scaled, it prevents and makes it difficult to detect security vulnerabilities that arise from the expanding attack surface. This also results in gaping compliance deficits.
Cybersecurity scalability is usually affected by the solution’s dense infrastructure and the huge cost of expanding these solutions.
Now, we will be exploring cybersecurity compliance software and its benefits.
Secureframe
Secureframe is an automated compliance platform that helps organizations maintain privacy and security compliance regulations, including SOC 2, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, ISO 27001, CCPA, CMMC, GDPR, and more.
This compliance software helps you enable end-to-end compliance that is highly scalable with your business’s growing needs.
Its key features include continuous monitoring, personnel management, automated tests, vendor access, vendor risk management, enterprise policy management, risk management, and more.
Thus, with Secureframe, you can close faster deals, focus and align limited resources on high priorities, and keep up-to-date responses.
Strike Graph
Strike Graph is an all-in-one compliance and certifications platform that makes achieving and implementing your cybersecurity goals easier.
It simplifies security compliance by streamlining and consolidating security processes into one centralized, flexible platform that eliminates silos and missed deadlines.
Strike Graph supports multi-framework mapping with regulations like HIPAA, SOC 2, PCI-DSS, ISO 27001, ISO 27701, TISAX, GDPR, and more.
Besides, it also offers customized security reports that help you build trust, strengthen relationships, and open opportunities.
Sprinto
Sprinto is an automation-enabled and audit-aligned compliance software that empowers organizations to power their compliance programs by supporting over 20+ frameworks, including GDPR, HIPAA, AICPA SOC, and more.
It removes the hassle of figuring out the compliance program for organizations with a low-touch approach. Its adaptive automation capabilities organize, capture, and nudge corrective actions against each task in an audit-friendly manner.
Moreover, Sprinto organizes tasks based on compliance priorities and provides expert support that helps you implement your organization’s best security practices and controls.
Totem
Totem is a cybersecurity compliance management software designed exclusively for small businesses to help them meet and manage compliance requirements.
Besides managing your own small business’s compliance needs, you can also leverage Totem services to manage compliance for your business’s managed providers or DoD contractor’s compliance, like NIST 800-171, DFARS, and CMMC cybersecurity compliance.
It’s a highly seamless, affordable, and convenient compliance solution for small businesses. It also provides additional templates and supporting documents you can customize as per your needs, including CUI Identification Guide, Acceptable Use Policy, and Incident Report.
Hyperproof
Trusted by companies like Fortinet, Outreach, and 3M, Hyperproof is compliance and risk management software that allows you to manage your cybersecurity compliance frameworks centrally and efficiently.
It automates compliance tasks, so you can use them across multiple other frameworks, avoiding repetition. Besides, it allows you to focus on the risks that matter the most by collecting, tracking, and prioritizing risks in a single place with a risk register and reporting system.
Moreover, it also lets you maximize your workflows by scaling your risk management and compliance workflows. Thus, Hyperproof is a scalable, secure, centralized compliance and risk management platform with 70+ pre-built framework templates to enable scalability and business growth.
ControlMap
ControlMap simplifies compliance management automation and cybersecurity audits, enabling companies like RFPIO and Exterro to save hundreds of hours on compliance framework management and monitoring.
It speeds up your compliance management by connecting over 30+ systems like cloud, HR, and IAM systems.
Once the systems are connected, the platform’s collectors automatically start collecting data like user account evidence, MFA configuration, and databases which are then pre-mapped to the frameworks like SOC 2 to get a detailed view of the gaps that organizations must address to meet their compliance needs.
It comes preloaded with over 25+ frameworks, including NIST, ISO 27001, CSF, and GDPR.
Apptega
Apptega is an intuitive and comprehensive compliance management tool that simplifies cybersecurity and compliance by eliminating manual efforts and easily passing compliance audits.
It helps you achieve unprecedented visibility and control and boost efficiency by 50%, streamlining compliance audits, management, and reporting with ease.
Besides, you can easily fit Apptega to your organization’s needs and compliance requirements.
CyberSaint
CyberSaint claims to be the leader in the cyber risk management industry, automating compliance, delivering unparalleled visibility into network risks, and establishing resilience from risk assessment to the boardroom.
It focuses on standardizing, centralizing, and automating every facet of cybersecurity risk management features like
- Continuous risk management
- Automated crosswalking
- Cyber risk register
- Executive and board reporting
- Frameworks and standards
It offers an intuitive and scalable implementation of the FAIR methodology for organizations.
SecurityScorecard
SecurityScorecard provides a continuous compliance monitoring solution that helps track adherence to the existing public and private compliance mandates and regulations and identify potential gaps in the same.
Trusted by over 20,000+ enterprise compliance teams like Nokia and Truphone, SecurityScorecard streamlines your compliance workflows by ensuring vendor compliance, accelerating security workflows, reporting effective compliance security posture, and integrating your compliance stack.
Clearwater
Clearwater is designed exclusively for organizations and institutions required to meet healthcare cybersecurity and compliance requirements.
It combines deep healthcare, compliance, and cybersecurity expertise with comprehensive technological solutions, making organizations more resilient and secure.
It serves institutions like hospitals and health systems, digital health, ambulatory care, physician practice management, healthcare investors, healthcare attorneys, and medical devices/MedTech.
Databrackets
Databrackets is a compliance, cybersecurity, and audit management platform that offers a user-friendly and secure online compliance assessment solution for small to medium-sized businesses and organizations.
It generates customizable reports, policies & procedures, and custom assessments, and access third-party vendor risks for the best cybersecurity compliance provision and practices.
Besides, Databrackers also enables API integrations with ServiceNow, Jira, and other ticketing systems.
Final Words
With the emerging cybersecurity risks and data protection legislation and regulations, prioritizing cybersecurity compliance and automating and streamlining its processes is crucial.
Thus, if you want to protect your organization’s reputation, revenue, and authority, take compliance seriously and check out the cybersecurity compliance software mentioned above to protect your customer’s data and prevent malicious cyberattacks.
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