The Requirements for Continuous Compliance

Understanding What Continuous Compliance Means

Whether you obtain  ISO 27001 certification  or your organization is legally mandated to comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, establishing a compliant information security management system is a significant undertaking. However, achieving certification or passing an audit is not the end of your responsibilities. A data breach cost  $4.4 million  on average in 2021. It can also lead to a loss of consumer trust and lost business.

Maintaining compliance between audits or certification periods is critical to protecting your customers and your business. Data security requires a proactive stance on security and framework or regulatory conformity. When your business is in continuous compliance, it also makes the audit period run more smoothly.

Ongoing adherence to standards requires comprehensive monitoring of your security system and procedures. Through consistent tracking, you discover new vulnerabilities when they arise and can address them before the threat becomes a security breach. You know when your company is out of compliance with any requirements in real-time. Ongoing adherence also allows you to stay on top of changing regulations and compliance requirements, so you can adapt and evolve your policies, processes, and controls to maintain compliance.

Knowing How To Achieve Continuous Compliance

Maintaining regulatory or certification compliance requires a system or framework that provides a map for monitoring and testing data and information security. There are typically eight components you need to cover in your framework:

1. Policy management:Regularly monitor and evaluate your company’s security rules, regulatory requirements, and employee training processes.
2. Vulnerability management:Run tests on your security system or perform vulnerability scans regularly. Identify vulnerabilities and repair the security gaps.
3. Risk management:Develop a risk assessment strategy to identify, categorize, and rank your company’s security risks.
4. Data management:Monitor the processes for maintaining data confidentiality, availability and integrity. Ensuring your scope consistently reflects your company’s sensitive data helps you maintain continuous compliance.
5. Incident management:In 2021,  4,145 breaches  disclosed more than 22 billion records. Maintain strategies that help you identify breaches and respond to them quickly and efficiently.
6. Business continuity management:Devise a strategy for how your company will respond to a crisis to get up and running again as quickly as possible.
7. Human resources management:Ensure your HR team is trained and understands your company’s regulatory and compliance requirements.
8. Vendor management:Monitor your company’s relationships and agreements with outside vendors to ensure they comply with security requirements.

Using manual processes to handle ongoing compliance processes is a resource-intensive approach. An automated security and compliance platform is an effective and efficient solution.

Maintaining Continuous Compliance With Ease

Compyl’s end-to-end information security and compliance platform make continuous compliance easy. Whether your company adheres to one or multiple frameworks, our system ensures you remain compliant with them 24/7.  Request a demo  today and learn how we can transform your business.