Cybersecurity is a significant part of an organization’s operation. It encompasses everything from protecting essential data from cyber attackers or whoever wants to steal any information which can cause harm and loss to your business. 

Regulatory compliance monitoring is a vital factor of any cybersecurity program. It can increase the safety and assurance of your company. But recently, cybersecurity compliance is becoming difficult to meet. There are a lot of regulations, complex extraterritorial laws, and general protection laws that you need to comply with and understand.

The cybersecurity compliance policy that applies to your company depends on what nature of the industry you are involved in. To help you understand more of these regulations, let’s take a look at this list:

Cybersecurity Compliance in 2022: Joe Biden’s Cybersecurity Executive Order

This executive order calls for the reformation of security programs through government entities and the whole private sector. Some of the highlights of the Executive Order include multi-factor authentication, better-quality supply chain security standards data breach transparency between sellers and government entities.

Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX)

SOX or the Sarbanes-Oxley was passed in the year 2002 by the United States Congress to keep shareholders and the general public safe from accounting errors and fake practices, and to strengthen the accuracy of corporate leaks. 

All public companies should comply with SOX whether on the IT or financial side. SOX helps to define which records should be stored and how low should it be. There are corresponding penalties for violations or non-compliance.

The SHIELD Act

The New York Stop Hacks and Improve Electronic Data Security Act or also known as the SHIELD Act was enacted on the 25th day of July in the year 2019 and goes into effect on March 21, 2020. The said act was an amendment to the New York State Information Security Breach and Notification Act.

The SHIELD Act aims to update New York’s data breach notification law and allow it to keep up with the current technology. The bill widens breach notification requirements and the scope of information covered under the law. The bill requires the designation of a person to facilitate the vendor risk management process as well as oversee data security measures of third-party service providers and vendors. Civil penalties of up to $5,000 can be incurred for violation.

Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS)

PCI DSS or the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard is an information security standard for organizations that take charge of branded credit cards from major credit card schemes. 

PCI DSS aims to reduce credit card fraud and increase controls around cardholder data. Validation of compliance is performed annually or quarterly by different assessors and requires 12 requirements. Some of the requirements were encrypting the transmission of cardholder data over open, public networks, installing and maintaining a firewall configuration to protect cardholder data, tracking and monitoring all access to cardholder data and network resources and testing security systems processes regularly.

California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)

The CCPA or the California Consumer Privacy Act is a new law that became effective on January 1, 2020. The CCPA is designed to improve consumer privacy rights and protect residents in the state of California by enforcing rules on how businesses handle their data and personal information.  CCPA opens doors for class-action lawsuits against companies who fail to take precautions to prevent data leaks. 

Cybersecurity compliance standards are a key component for companies to secure their data and protect their businesses. There is no valid excuse for not conforming to cybersecurity compliance.

Ways to Ensure Cybersecurity Compliance in 2022

Cybersecurity hacks and data breaches are inevitable and can happen to any company, big or small. Therefore, every company needs to play its part in cybersecurity compliance to manage the risks and practice compliance with ever-changing regulations. 

If you want to establish an effective cybersecurity compliance plan, here are some tips that you can take note of:

Create a Team

It is important to create a compliance team that will take charge of assessing and monitoring cybersecurity concerns. Whether your business is big or small, keep in mind that you need a team to manage the risks and allow your business to continue its operations in safety.  You can create workflows and make them known across your business and IT departments.

Choose a Framework

By choosing a framework, you also need to understand your risk profile. You need to assess the scope of coverage, the amount in detail, taxonomy, and industry-specific terminologies. Your framework will serve as your benchmark and it will depend on the type of business environment that you have. Therefore, you need to consider what is most important to your company as well as its compliance goals.

Enable Risk Analysis and Set Controls

Risk analysis will help your business to be more cybersecurity-compliant with a risk-based approach. With that, you need to identify all information assets, systems, and networks that they access.

Assess the risk level of each data type from high risk to low risk and analyze. Then set the risk tolerance by determining whether to decline, accept, transfer, or alleviate the risk.

As you enable risk analysis, you also need to set controls to maintain and ensure that you comply with cybersecurity. You can use encryptions, firewalls, and password reuse policies.

Set Up and Update Policies

Set up policies that you want to implement when it comes to cybersecurity compliance. It will document activities and controls and will serve for internal or external audits. It is also important to update those policies from time to time to have an efficient risk management plan.

Monitor And Respond Nonstop

Since cybersecurity hacks and threats are evolving, all compliance requirements must also keep up. Cyber hackers always find a new way to penetrate and steal data by using existing strategies. To ensure the safety of your business, you must take several steps ahead of these cyber threats. It is essential to do continuous monitoring which will allow you to detect new threats and vulnerable areas. With that, you will be able to respond to the threats and even prevent them from turning into a data breach.

Need help navigating through the latest compliance guidelines? We at SecureBrain can help. Reach out to us today to learn more about our services.