Renovating your IT Security and Compliance Program

March 24, 2022
Compyl Information Security

If one thing is sure, the threats companies face each year continue to evolve. 30 years ago, the focus was on reducing the office secretary taking home their favorite office supplies and printer consumables or stealing the petty cash. Threats of today are much more significant in nature and complexity. We can all read about the rise of cyber-attacks causing massive interruptions to normal business operations with little research effort. These threats are intentional, sourced both internationally and domestically, with no hint on what target is in their sites. Admittedly, the government departments and utilities get more attention, but they’re far from the sole target of malicious actors.

So, to combat this, information security professionals put in security programs that plug the holes, monitor the status of systems, and report on what to fix next. This shift in attacks resulted in many different security consortiums releasing their own set of ‘acceptable standards’ that provide an adequate security protection level but are far from exhaustive.

With the increase of threats in 2022, now is the time to dig into our company’s security and compliance program and validate their robustness and risk of compromise.

What makes up a typical IT security and compliance program today? 

This question shapes one of the biggest conversations within the information security and compliance space. It’s hard to identify the “standard” approach companies use across the board for many reasons. While companies may operate within the same industry, they will have completely different information security and compliance needs.

Typically, security programs base themselves on ISO27001. Although there are many variations of security frameworks out there, they can all be compared to ISO27001 in some capacity. This is ultimately by design, although not satisfying all controls of each framework, ISO27001 provides the best-generalized security framework to follow. Your company may be required to comply with other frameworks related to industry or location. For example, Primary Cardholder Industry (PCI DSS), SOC2, HIPAA, NIST, GDPR, COBIT, and others.

In addition, your company may need to comply with additional controls provided by customers, regulations, or risk mitigation exercises to reduce the threat of compromise.

3 best practices companies should implement this year

1. Information Security and Compliance is a journey

It’s about the journey, much like a family trip, not the destination. Build a security program and implement a solution that allows for changes, adaptions, centralizes data, advocates for visibility, bringing information security and compliance into the forefront of your business. Many companies have piecemeal security programs that rely on multiple pieces of software for various needs but lack the ability to consolidate information that each solution is telling them. By finding a solution that pulls all tasks, assets, actions, and vulnerabilities into a single focus, an organization will have more clarity regarding where they stand and what to do next. Knowing what processes or verticals of your business are at risk improves your ability to implement the proper mitigation solutions.

2. Continuous Compliance

Organizations should think about regulatory compliance as a 365-day exercise. Most framework auditing validates compliance over a year, so ensuring you’re compliant throughout the year is imperative to a successful audit result. Long audit discovery periods and cumbersome artifact collection is an internal red flag that current processes are not working the way they should. Finding a solution that can offer you critical insights and allow tracking of your regulatory compliance throughout the year is an integral component of your security program.

3. Embrace Automation

Just like in any process, your weakest link is a disorganized one. People add complexity and errors to a process. Identifying redundant manual tasks that consume time and introduce errors is the first step to improving and automating processes to reduce errors. This will free up employees to do more important things, reduce rework, reduce risk and eliminate the need to complete arduous tasks that provide little value.

Learn how Compyl can help you with each of these best practices.

Retool with a scalable solution

Implementing the above best practices will instantly strengthen an information security and compliance program. These forward-thinking solutions help streamline an organization’s security and compliance posture while identifying vulnerable areas. Relying on software that doesn’t truly fit your needs or policies implemented decades ago is a recipe for disaster. At Compyl, we focus on solving organizations’ real information security and compliance issues. As an all-in-one automated platform, we use unique integrations to continuously consolidate information and streamline regulatory compliance, security intelligence, and organizational control. This enables customers to establish or enhance their security and compliance programs quickly and effectively to accommodate government or industry requirements. To learn more about our platform and how it can transform your security program, contact the Compyl team today.

By clicking “Accept”, you agree to the use of cookies on your device in accordance with our Privacy and Cookie policies