Managing a business today comes with a number of daily battles that need to be fought. Resources are sometimes limited and expectations from customers and clients are always increasing. 

New cyber risks are also emerging on a daily basis. Even smaller businesses, which used to be out of the crosshairs of cyberattackers, are now facing dangers that were once restricted to large-scale enterprises.

For an organization to maneuver this landscape successfully, it requires much more than just investments in cybersecurity. Businesses also need to have a clear compliance strategy in place that meets a wide range of regulatory requirements.

Finding the Right Balance Between Security and Compliance

For digital security and regulatory compliance, striking the right balance is key. By following the strategies below, you’ll make sure your organization doesn’t neglect either element:

Keeping Up with the Moving Target

All businesses are needing to adapt to considerable changes in the cybersecurity landscape. Nearly all industries now have regulations in place to ensure businesses meet certain security standards. While some of these provisions are only “recommendations”, others are often “legally binding.” 

The complexity of these regulations can create a certain amount of difficulty for companies as they try to adjust their processes to comply with them. They may require restructuring of an organization’s reporting formats or new investments in advanced security solutions.

Making Security Everyone’s Business

All types of threats that can impact an organization need to be managed effectively. This often requires multi-faceted strategies that cover more than deployment of new security solutions or changing organizational policies. Businesses also need to develop a security-first culture supported by methodical planning and a disciplined approach to risk mitigation.

Setting up a security awareness program is one example of a step in the right direction. However, cybersecurity training shouldn’t be limited to just a small group. Collaboration in this initiative should be at every level of the business, regardless of where an employee is positioned on an organizational chart.

When all stakeholders understand the risk of security issues and how their actions can help in minimizing them, it becomes much easier to defend the business against new threats.

Still, these programs shouldn’t be reduced to a set of training documents or checklists. They should be designed to maximize engagement, encouraging all employees to get more involved in security initiatives. This can be accomplished by setting up team workshops or conducting simulated phishing attempts to help sharpen employees’ skills when identifying and handling new security risks.

Implementing a Structured Risk Management Framework

Dealing with cyber threats doesn’t mean you’ll remove “every” element of business risk. However, it does mean you’ll want to at least get more insights into any security gaps present and progressive steps you can take to fill them. Risk management frameworks help achieve this by providing a methodological process for locating, analyzing, and mitigating vulnerabilities as they surface.

The first step of risk management is knowing where gaps exist. This requires evaluating IT systems, reviewing existing security protocols, and analyzing network usage patterns to find potential entry points. With gaps identified, the next step for businesses is to conduct an impact analysis based on the current threat profiles. This means understanding potential financial repercussions associated with current risks or any possible damage to a brand’s reputation if a breach took place. 

The final step in a risk management framework is threat mitigation. This stage involves implementing measures designed to increase resilience against cyber attacks, and lowering any potential damage they can cause.

Leveraging New Technologies for Better Compliance

Security compliance can be draining on many organizations’ resources. Thankfully, new technologies provide more streamlined processes to automate much of the compliance management process. The businesses that take advantage of these technologies tend to be more diligent in their security approach, which only helps to improve their brand positioning.

With the availability of new compliance management systems, several routine security functions such as vulnerability assessments, patching, and network log assessments can be done automatically. Apart from saving time, this helps reduce human error, which can lengthen the amount of time before recognizing and mitigating new threats.

Another development in compliance management is the integration of AI-driven workflows. Now, businesses can leverage AI to perform fast and efficient data mining on their behalf. This helps businesses make their security processes much more efficient since they are able to analyze network activity in real time, revealing harmful changes in network activity that security teams can quickly investigate.

Prioritizing Data Protection and Privacy

Businesses operating in more sensitive industries are commonly obligated to comply with a growing number of regulations, including needing to provide adequate security controls to protect the information they collect and process. 

Meeting these strict requirements requires a holistic security approach. Data encryption is a big part of this process. By encrypting data both in transit and at rest, it helps businesses to ensure that even if a breach does successfully occur, the information extracted will still be unreadable. 

Strict access controls are another important component. Limiting access to sensitive data based on the principle of least privilege helps to ensure that only authorized individuals can view or modify any sensitive information.

Outside of using various technical measures, having strict data governance policies and procedures in place helps to ensure everyone in the organization continues to put security first. This involves regular training for employees on data protection best practices and regularly auditing the effectiveness of those training programs.

The Role of Penetration Testing

Meeting compliance requirements demands more proactive security planning. However, it can be difficult to know whether the protocols being put in place are effective or not without the right data. This is where penetration testing comes in.

Penetration testers attempt to circumvent firewalls, gain access to internal networks, and manipulate applications to access sensitive data. By testing security systems, these ethical hacking teams look for the loopholes in security that most people miss.

The primary goal for conducting penetration testing is to help a business find serious issues that can compromise the security of their systems or expose them to non-compliance risks, while helping them to improve existing protocols. It’s a highly cost-effective way to ensure your existing security controls are effective without needing to wait for a real attack to happen.

Strategic Management of Third-Party Risk

Many enterprises today are heavily integrated third-party supplier networks. When managed properly, these relationships can facilitate smoother business operations. However, when managed poorly, the organizations can inadvertently widen their digital attack surface and risk more noncompliance issues.

Conducting vendor partnership assessments on a periodic basis ensures that businesses lower their risks as much as possible. It’s important for all organizations to understand the security capabilities of their vendor before signing contracts, especially concerning specific compliance certifications and relevant data protection protocols.

To build stronger, long-term partnerships, continuous vendor monitoring is important. Regular audits ensure partners are maintaining ongoing due diligence to protect sensitive business information from network breaches or damaging their partner’s reputation with their clients.

Using Communication as Your Strongest Weapon

The security of your organization isn’t something you can handle by yourself. It calls for proper coordination and extensive communication with all business departments.

Open communication is required with security teams, business managers, and partner organizations to tackle security issues effectively. Threat intelligence can be shared and accessed across industries to help identify new threats as they emerge and manage them effectively. 

By having clear communications pre-established, security teams can reach the right people in the shortest time possible if and when a breach occurs. This leads to faster containment and lower business impact.

Address Cybersecurity Risks While Keeping Your Business Compliant

Modern business environments are demanding in all types of industries, particularly when it comes to cybersecurity and compliance. But something that’s important to remember is that strong security does not automatically mean business compliance.

To be successful, organizations need to know how to successfully navigate both critical areas. This means developing practical but effective security measures while relying on the right tools and best practice to monitor and maintain regulatory requirements. By taking these steps, you’ll keep your business agile to industry changes while strengthening your cybersecurity resilience. 

Author Bio Information

Nazy Fouladirad is President and COO of Tevora, a global leading cybersecurity consultancy. She has dedicated her career to creating a more secure business and online environment for organizations across the country and world. She is passionate about serving her community and acts as a board member for a local nonprofit organization.