Businesses include a network of processes and people, and therefore conflict of ideas, priorities, and procedures which are quite natural. Successful business is built on the foundation of achieving harmony amongst its people and processes. However, most organizations fail in this attempt, putting their business at risk. Violation of compliance regulations is often an outcome of such failure. While several organizations view IT security compliance as a never-ending rigmarole that creates complications, inhibits productivity, and causes redundant expenditure, non-compliance is more harmful in fact.
Non-compliance or negligence in IT Security compliance can attract heavy penalties, not only causing financial loss, but also loss of reputation. For instance, the US Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve issued individual sanctions against HSBC North America Holdings Inc. for violating the Bank Secrecy Act. And the penalty estimated is almost $500 million. Also, way back in 2007 the Department of Health & Human Services (DHHS) penalized the Providence Health & Services (PHS) in Seattle for violating HIPAA Compliance rules, as tapes and disks containing sensitive data of around 386,000 patients were found missing. PHS had to bear a hefty sum of $100,000 as penalty.
These apart, in several cases the casual attitude of employees has resulted in loss of laptops, and portable storage devices and hard drives containing critical information. And similarly, disgruntled employees have been the cause of security breaches in many cases. All this proves that the absence of an efficient compliance management system can be a major drawback for organizations. Since all businesses are vulnerable to security attacks, a compliance solution that can help track, control and rectify security lapses and fix vulnerabilities is a prerequisite.
Imposing a system to efficiently tackle all security and risk issues in a comprehensive and cohesive manner is the need of the hour. Enforcement of stringent measures encompassing all governance, risk and compliance functions can deliver profound results. And an integrated and automated security system can ensure elimination of all manual processes thereby minimizing the possibility of errors.
Not only do such tools normally have significant operational benefits—including early detection of breaches, a major factor in limiting risk—but they can prove that the organization had continuous compliance rather than point-in-time compliance, as assessments do. The organization’s bargaining position when dealing with a regulatory association is therefore greatly improved and avoiding a half million-dollar fine is enough to easily justify the cost of several such tools, though breaches often lead to more than a single fine. But most of these tools also bring side benefits such as tracking unauthorized changes, detecting reliability and performance issues, or simply indicating suboptimal configurations in operational systems.
Therefore, a unified compliance software solution with a centralized management system can provide the capability for comprehensive threat management. By generating real-time reports of the compliance status across the organization, such a solution can help take timely action to curb threats. It can also execute processes to assess risks and offer remedial measures. Such an intuitive system can also help devise preventive measures to combat anticipatory threats. With such a highly capable system businesses can be saved from bearing the brunt of defying IT Security compliance norms.
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