Cyber security assessment initiatives and frameworks abound in the US government, the most important being the Federal Information Systems Management Act (FISMA), passed in 2002. The law’s broad scope included a mandate to the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), charging it to create methods and standards to assess and optimize the cybersecurity posture of US government agencies.
Throughout my career, I have worked with hundreds of organizations. Regardless of the vertical or size of the organization, I have found that many executives and security professionals feel like the interviewer in the Rickie Fowler commercial when it comes to their organization’s digital security. They don’t know where to start, for instance, nor are they aware of where and how today’s ever-evolving risks and threats affect the respective organization.
When an organization is ready to deploy a new solution, or build a new system, there is often a continuing discussion about the relative merits of using the cloud versus deploying on-premises. While there are a number of aspects that play into this decision, it is not always clear which is the better solution for security and compliance. Typically, deployment issues are not clear because security and compliance solutions quickly change when you are using shared vs. dedicated environments.
The time-consuming, administratively burdensome compliance process is riddled with potential human errors that can lead to violations. As securing data increasingly relies on proving controls’ effectiveness, the compliance becomes more stressful for everyone in the organization. However, building compliance workflow can streamline the process leading to a more cost effect and auditable outcome.
Here's how an agreement between Japan and the European Union will impact the safety of data transfer.
Being a compliance manager can sound tedious to a lot of people. When people think about compliance, they often think in terms of checking boxes on audit forms. However, compliance management is more like putting together a puzzle without having the cover picture. Compliance issues come from a variety of regulations and industry standards, often overlapping while sometimes being disconnected.
As data breach threats increase, governments and industry standards organizations seek to force organizations into maintaining better data security controls. Thus, creating an effective compliance program has become a business operations imperative rather than a series of “best practices.”
Highly regulated financial institutions often struggle with compliance management. As a financial institution matures its cybersecurity compliance program, the document management requirements often mean they need to find automated solutions that can create a single source of truth to ease audit stress.
