If you dont have access to up-to-date evidence, you cant assess whether controls youve implemented are functioning properly or not, which may leave a key IT system exposed. It operates on the understanding that cyber risks can change by the minute, regulatory volatility isnt going away, and zero trust is now the default security (and B2B purchase) model. When your organization is good at proving your compliance posture, you win and retain more business. Security assurance/IT compliance work is an iterative process. She loves helping tech companies earn more business through clear communications and compelling stories. For instance, what are the most critical risks within your business that need to be mitigated? JC spent the past several years in communications, content strategy, and demand generation roles in market-leading software companies such as PayScale and Tableau. If an organization wants to be consistent at mitigating risks, their information security compliance teams and business stakeholders need to share responsibility for maintaining security and compliance. Security assurance and compliance teams also need their own platform for managing daily compliance operations a place for making project plans, getting work done, tracking progress, and identifying areas for improvement. When security compliance teams spend much of their time on manual repetitive tasks, theyre left with little time to focus on other important tasks aimed at improving security and resiliency (e.g., testing controls on high risk areas, talking to business units to understand whats changing in the business and how those changes may create new risks or amplify existing risks). Security compliance work is never done. First, by reviewing things and making improvements continuously, you effectively minimize the chances of experiencing security and compliance lapses and of leaving risks unaddressed. Whos responsible for critical tasks and how do we monitor that? Turns out that compliance professionals find two types of activities to be especially tedious: evidence collection and management, and working with internal stakeholders who need to assist in the audit prep process. When the team keeps track of all of their work in a single compliance operations platform, it becomes easy to prove to customers, auditors, and regulators that your organization has been operating in a secure and compliant way all along. In Hyperproofs 2022 IT Compliance Benchmark Survey (completed by 1,014 IT security assurance/compliance professionals), we found that 60% of global tech companies are still managing IT risks in an ad-hoc way, in siloed departments, with disparate processes and multiple disconnected tools. Hyperproofs compliance operations platform was built with these key principles of good operations in mind. What IT/business system does the evidence reside in? Automation and good processes can help us get there and remain there in light of new or changing requirements. If these statistics resonate with you, and if you want to get a better handle on your information security compliance program, were here to help. Compliance work can feel really intimidating if you think about everything that needs to be done all at once. To achieve continuous compliance, every organization needs to have a reporting and monitoring system that provides real-time insight into the status of internal controls, risks, audits, and automatic flagging of issues that need attention. While it might be possible to bring discipline and rigor to these processes using the same tools we use now, it will be close to impossible to keep it that way. Compliance Operations is an operating model and a methodology that recognizes that managing information security compliance and security assurance programs consistently and on a day-to-day basis is a critical component of effective IT risk management. The Compliance Operations methodology provides a way for organizations to manage IT risks in a more disciplined, proactive manner and efficiently prove to their customers that they can keep sensitive customer data safe. In this article, well tell you about an operating model and methodology were calling Compliance Operations (or ComOps for short) you can use to get things into better shape. This is intuitive when you look at how various business functions are operating today. As your organization grows, youll face new compliance requirements and new risks that need to be mitigated. The advantages of taking an operational approach, as opposed to a traditional approach (e.g., rushing to check controls, collect evidence, and fix controls right before an audit) are three-fold. Compliance and security terms and concepts, Top Data Compliance Frameworks Tech Companies are Adhering to, Advantages of Taking an Operational Approach to Compliance Activities, Put Compliance Operations Principles Into Practice with a Platform. Connecting disparate information silos across the IT risk management processes so risks, security requirements, and the state of existing internal controls are well understood has to be the first step if an organization wants to manage IT risks in an agile, proactive way. As a seasoned IT risk management professional, you already know that staying on top of security is a constant battle. There should be a way to track issues and tasks so that those involved in compliance know what they need to do next. Qorus Uses Hyperproof to Gain Control Over Its Compliance Program. How long do I consider the evidence to be fresh or valid? Whats the next audit thats coming up? Hyperproof is your assistant in creating a highly effective Compliance Operations function. They should make this data available to the business process owners. Further, at the controls level, its easy to become over-controlled as compliance professionals try to meet different but somewhat similar framework requirements. In the survey, we specifically asked people, When it comes to preparing for and executing audits, what tasks do you find to be tedious/take longer than youd like?. And finally, how can we quickly see if theres a potential issue, like a control not being tested on schedule or if we failed to remediate a key finding? JC is responsible for driving Hyperproof's content marketing strategy and activities. When defining your evidence collection process, its important to consider the following: By keeping all this contextual information alongside each piece of evidence in a system of record, you can easily reference this information for future audits, saving time and money. Its important that the compliance team knows when business process and technology changes happen. When do controls need to be implemented, reviewed, and tested? Stop by and see us at booth #2920. This issue has driven the move towards unified controls frameworks. Who is responsible for submitting the evidence. Dive deeper into the world of compliance operations. Its important to look at your compliance program as a living entity and make incremental improvements on a continuous basis. This is a departure from what we see today, where many business process owners/stakeholders view compliance as something that happens off to the side. For instance, whats the cadence for internal and external audit activities? When new technology is purchased or when a new business process is created, new risks to information may be introduced. When your team can easily collect evidence on an ongoing basis, no one needs to scramble or go into fire-drill mode right before an audit, which helps keep your teams stress levels down. Business process owners from HR, Finance, Engineering, and IT are operating IT systems and processes that can affect data security, integrity, and privacy. It gives you the visibility, efficiency, and consistency you and your team need to stay on top of all your security assurance and compliance work. Whats the appropriate frequency for collecting that evidence? Were Headed to Black Hat 2022 in Las Vegas August 9 - 11th! Whats more, three in five respondents said that they spend 40 percent or more of their time at work on low-level administrative tasks when it comes to managing IT risks and compliance. All of this ultimately results in unwanted risk exposure: 63% of all surveyed said their organization has experienced a data breach that led to a compromise of regulated data in the past 24 months. For instance, one report should help you identify which controls need review because evidence isnt fresh anymore. The business process owner is accountable to ensure that the right processes or procedures are followed as they are operating their systems through the course of normal business. What types of evidence are needed to test whether this control is functional? But if you take a pragmatic and incremental approach, the work becomes much more manageable. Sales teams have Salesforce, HR has Workday, and Engineering has a variety of DevOp tools to efficiently execute their work. Latest on compliance, regulations, and Hyperproof news. As we mentioned earlier, we found in our 2022 IT Compliance Benchmark Survey that collecting evidence tends to be so tedious and time-consuming that it holds security assurance professionals back from tackling more strategic tasks. The compliance team should document what the proper processes are so that whats happening can be reviewed against the established standard.
Rather than reacting to the demands from other stakeholders, you choose to look ahead and figure out who needs to do what, and by when. A pragmatic approach is one that starts with your organizations business needs in mind. All of your companys risks, control objectives and requirements, controls, and compliance artifacts can be documented in Hyperproof and these information objects can be mapped. Its important for the infosec compliance team to understand their business, why these business processes exist, what tools are used in these business processes, and why things are done a certain way so they can understand the security and compliance implications. Compliance and business stakeholders (and product engineers) should work together to ensure that IT systems are configured and used in ways that advance business objectives and adhere to internal security and regulatory standards. You probably also know that managing IT risks proactively and consistently is incredibly difficult to do. As such, compliance and security assurance professionals need to apply more rigor and discipline to their day-to-day activities. You should have an easy way to see which security objectives arent met yet because controls havent been implemented or tested. Manual, repetitive tasks, such as evidence collection, controls monitoring, and reporting, should be automated. Is there a new security regulation or standard your business has to become compliant with in the coming months in order to do business with certain customer segments? Controls can quickly become obsolete when a change occurs in an organization, such as when an existing IT system is retired and a new one is implemented. Knowing your current state and your business priorities, you can start to set realistic, achievable milestones and identify the most important set of tasks that need to be completed in the near term. Additionally, in order to pass an independent audit, youll need to supply your auditors with the correct compliance artifacts. To learn more about Hyperproof, sign up for a demo: https://hyperproof.io/request-a-demo/. These business stakeholders and operators purchase new technology in order to improve their own productivity and to deliver better customer experiences. She is originally from Harbin, China. Last Updated on Mar 24, 2022 10 Minutes Read, Product Integrations Frameworks Free Cyber Defense Solution, About Careers Press Security and Trust Partner Program Benefits Contact, Log Into Hyperproof Support Help Center Developer Portal Status Page, 113 Cherry St PMB 78059 Seattle, Washington 98104 1.833.497.7663 (HYPROOF) info@hyperproof.io, 2022 Copyright All Rights Reserved Hyperproof. Which risks need better mitigation controls? By having a clearly defined process for collecting and reviewing evidence, you can save a significant amount of time, money, and frustration and minimize the risk of control failures. When compliance professionals spend so much of their time just trying to prepare for the upcoming audit, its difficult to enough time to focus on improving the organizations capabilities around managing risks. If you take a disciplined approach to setting incremental goals in service of improving your security and compliance posture over time, it becomes much easier to figure out the workloads and resources required to meet your objectives and allocate tasks to individuals within, and outside of, the security and compliance function.
Sitemap 3