Information Security Compliance

Imagine how much data your enterprise handles. Every day there are likely many internal emails, customer transactions, and perhaps some performance reporting — all critical to the business and needing to be secured. The information security compliance keeps your organization data information safe. It is compliance with some specific regulations or standards which guarantee the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information. Information has brought a recognized benchmark that assists in measuring and evaluating security best practices to avert data breach and promote safety, thus leading to an improvement in the security posture of the organization. What do you mean by information security compliance? Information security compliance or InfoSec compliance actually means complying with the conditions established by a third party, on which an organization will ensure adequate protection of its data and IT assets. Through the introduction of the recommended controls and processes, the main goals to be achieved can be to ensure that any information within the organization is kept confidential, maintained at its integrity, and made available when required. Usually, an organization can ensure compliance requirements according to certain industries, geographical areas, or types of data which have been processed or stored by an organization. For instance, health care providers in the United States must abide by [HIPAA], while entities processing credit card transactions. Need PCI compliance-the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. The InfoSec compliance would provide the organization with protection from risks of unauthorized access and data breaches due to a combination of evidence collections, risk assessments, and regular auditing. As far as profit is concerned, the enterprise would be shielded from an impact on its reputation. What is the difference between IT security and IT compliance? IT security is homegrown, not borne out of any third-party requirement. The other aspect of it is that such activities are usually under the ambit of the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) or the whole IT security team and run for a continuous maintenance-improvement effort. On the other hand, IT compliance makes sure that the IT security measures adopted by an organization are good enough for meeting industry standards and regulatory requirements. Even though IT compliance is audited according to third-party standards, there are not all security frameworks audited or certified by a regulatory body. For example, NIST CSF, which gives industry standards and best practices to cybersecurity risk, and CIS 18, which ensures the integrity of financial reports and business practices are both voluntary and self-assessed through internal compliance teams. Whether it is compulsory or voluntarily IT compliance, the main purpose is to show that an organization, either in compulsory or voluntary compliance, has information security management system (ISMS) that matches the industry standards and demonstrates to stakeholders that it is capable of protecting all sensitive information. What types of data involved in information security! An important question to address when implementing an InfoSec program would be, what data does your company collect, store, process, or transmit? Different types of data are likely to pose different types of information security risks. Data is usually classified according to type, satisfaction-risk or vulnerability, and the value it holds for the organization when it comes to security. Knowing a lot about the different types of data being collected and stored would greatly help in implementing an effective InfoSec program, controls, and eventually, compliance to industry-specific regulations. Most regulatory frameworks concern themselves with different degrees of sensitive data like personally identifiable information (PII), protected health information (PHI), or some level of “secret” information such as controlled unclassified information (CUI). Personally Identifiable Information (PII) Protected Health Information (PHI) Other sensitive data protected under cybersecurity compliance are: Importance of Information Security Compliance Well, the nitty-gritty importance of information security compliance is this. “But even though an organization is doing a good job in implementation of controls and management of risk, things sometimes remain inefficient in the documentation of the same in terms of a compliance program to measure and communicate their risk posture.” Depending on the markets or segments, information security compliance may sometimes legally be a requirement before an organization can operate (e.g., PCI DSS). But observing and measuring one’s program against applicable compliance standards does come with some very significant benefits:  1. Define static parameters to secure sensitive data  Information security compliance programs are probably the best ways to protect and preserve an organization’s sensitive data over time. When data is collected and stored all over the network, information security compliance ensures that the controls and policies exist at different places within the organization to safeguard against occurrences of security incidents and mitigate against negative consequences that may arise if they do occur.  2. Saves from penalties and fines related to non-compliance  Failure to comply with the applicable regulations usually incurs substantial fines or even criminal charges in certain industries and places. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) imposes maximum penalties for major violations not exceeding €20 million or 4% of the global annual revenue of the organization. In addition to the regulations and penalties for them, organizations suffering from data breaches bear very high remediation and business interruption costs. 3. Fostering customer trust  Compliance with information security is thus a means for companies to gain the confidence of their clients, partners, employees, and other stakeholders. In a survey conducted by McKinsey, 87% of the respondents from a survey carried on consumers said they “would not do business” with a company which had any concerns with its security practices. Half of the respondents also believe that they will be more inclined to trust companies that could quickly respond to breaching incidents as well as hacks and those that actively disclose such incidents to the public. 4. Gains competitive advantage  Regulatory compliance management proves an organization to be committed and ready to invest with all seriousness in the security of customer data. This is very fundamental in highly regulated industries like healthcare and finance. Organizations can, henceforth, build a major competitive advantage by promoting risk-based culture and coming up proactively on the