4 minutes read The need to maintain compliance with security standards and regulations is, by all means, familiar. IT and information security compliance has been around for years in the shape of manual and labor-intensive processes. Recently, however, a new exciting category of tools that aims to transform how compliance is getting done has emerged.
As a new market phenomenon, this category has multiple names.
Enterprises see it as an enhancement to existing GRC tools; Gartner has started toying with the name CCA (Continuous Compliance Automation), while others use CAT (Compliance Automation Tools) as an acronym.
We at Cypago, one of the first vendors to provide a holistic platform to automate and manage all compliance needs, simply call it Compliance Automation.
But what are the benefits of such tools, and why should a CISO or a GRC expert care about them? Why should a security compliance expert abandon the manual yet trusted and familiar way of running compliance processes and switch to an automated solution?
Let’s discuss what compliance means in today’s digital markets and why you should care about automating your security compliance.
Increasing demand for compliance
As more and more companies are embracing digital transformation and moving additional workloads to the cloud, data security is becoming a crucial factor in protecting sensitive information. In the last 12 months only, we’ve witnessed a series of events, such as the ones reported by Okta, LastPass, CircleCI, and many others, highlighting how customers’ data is at an all-time high risk of exposure, mishandling, and misuse. In turn, it created a massive spike in customers’ demand that their service providers and vendors prove compliance with security and privacy frameworks.
Although security doesn’t always equal compliance, security compliance automation tools can be a powerful solution for ensuring that your organization meets industry standards and complies with regulatory requirements.
Why should you be using compliance automation?
Here are some key benefits of using a security compliance automation tool.
- Reducing the Risk of Human Error
Mistakes can happen, but even a tiny error can have significant consequences regarding security and compliance. Compliance automation tools help to reduce the risk of human error by automating many of the manual processes involved in compliance management. As a result, organizations can spend less time worrying about compliance and focusing more on their core business objectives. - Ensuring Consistency
Compliance requirements can vary widely depending on the industry and regulatory bodies involved. Compliance automation tools help ensure that your organization consistently meets these requirements over time and across regions or product lines, reducing the risk of non-compliance and potential penalties. - Saving Time and Resources
Managing compliance can be a complex and time-consuming process. Compliance automation tools streamline many tasks involved in compliance management, such as documentation, evidence collection, data analysis, and reporting. This helps reduce the time and resources required for compliance management, allowing your organization to focus on other priorities.
- Enhancing Security
A security compliance automation tool can enhance your organization’s security posture by identifying and addressing system and process risks. An effective tool will assess the requirements made by the applicable security frameworks and highlight, on an ongoing basis, all the outstanding compliance gaps. Therefore, automated compliance testing can help to identify potential security risks, and automated remediation processes can help to resolve these issues quickly. - Keeping Up with Regulatory Changes
Regulatory requirements can change rapidly, making it challenging for organizations to keep up. Compliance automation tools can help to ensure that your organization stays up-to-date with the latest regulatory requirements, reducing the risk of non-compliance and potential penalties. - Providing Greater Visibility and Control
Compliance automation tools provide greater visibility and control over your organization’s compliance posture. Automated reporting and monitoring tools provide real-time insights into your compliance status, allowing you to identify and address any issues that arise quickly. With in-depth visibility, the ability to share insights with stakeholders and management becomes a more straightforward and actionable task. - Demonstrating Compliance to Auditors
Compliance audits can be stressful and time-consuming processes. Compliance automation tools simplify the process by providing a centralized repository of compliance-related documentation and evidence. In addition, auditors can leverage the tool just like the end user, only they will review evidence, validate it, and share feedback with the end user. This way, communication is made more accessible, reducing the time and resources required for audits.
Embrace change, earn efficiency
As described, using a security compliance automation tool can be a game-changer for your organization. By reducing the risk of human error, ensuring consistency, saving time and resources, and providing greater visibility and control, these tools can help your organization achieve and maintain compliance while focusing on your core business objectives.
Yet it’s a change in how compliance is done today. As such, it calls for an open mind and readiness for disruption. Take screenshots, for example – this manual habit is no longer required when leveraging automatic evidence collection and analysis. The same is true for data sharing; instead of sending emails or text messages, you can now collaborate more innovatively and efficiently with all the relevant stakeholders. Compliance monitoring is another case in which existing spreadsheets can be replaced with intelligent workflows and actionable dashboards, providing in-context compliance visibility.
Some might question the possibility of automating security compliance processes.
But many others already enjoy new compliance visibility, efficiency, and enforcement levels.
If you have any questions or comments about any of the above, please feel free to contact us.