In this modern age, more and more of the world is moving online with many companies digitally driving themselves to success. With increased cyber use comes increased cyber and data risks, bringing an added need for cyber and data risk compliance. This is a must-have for any company, so read on to find out how you can start protecting your business and general cyber use today.
What is cyber and data risk compliance?
Firstly, it might be worth establishing what compliance actually is. Understanding what you’re dealing with certainly makes it easier to tackle in the long run, which is important since these types of risks are causing disruption and damage to organisations across the world.
Compliance centres around following specific rules and meeting requirements. It involves constructing a programme that establishes risk-based controls to protect components of stored, processed, and transferred information like confidentiality and accessibility. Cyber and data risk compliance isn’t actually based on specific standards and regulations – this depends on the industry, with different standards overlapping. This can create difficulties for companies using a checklist-based method.
The benefits of compliance?
Cyber and data risk compliance measures will enhance the operational efficiency of your company with organised systems managing, storing, and using all types of sensitive data. Compliance will also maintain customer trust and loyalty and build your company’s reputation by ensuring that your customers’ sensitive information is safely secure.
Furthermore, compliance will reduce the risk of breaches, in turn reducing the response and recovery costs as well as the risk of a damaged reputation. With a damaged reputation often causing interruptions in business with a decrease in customer loyalty and profits, compliance approaches are unmistakably crucial.
What types of data are subject to compliance?
There are different types of data that cybersecurity protection focuses on. This includes personally identifiable information, such as your first and last name, financial information, such as your credit card numbers, and protected health information, such as your medical history.
What you can do next
After reading a bit about compliance, you might be wondering how you can approach it within your own company. One of the recommended actions is creating a programme based on cybersecurity compliance.
This involves hiring an expert team that can communicate across different departments. Expert teams can monitor compliance methods and evaluate their effectiveness. Establishing a risk analysis process is key. The team will need to identify information assets and systems as well as the data that they access.
Next, risks will need to be assessed and analysed, with risk levels being reviewed, especially where high-risk information is involved. Risk tolerances will need to be set, with workers determining what to do about each specific risk. Controls will need to be put in place to determine how you will mitigate or transfer risks. For example, password policies, encryptions, and firewalls are popular methods. You will then need to continuously monitor your policies to keep your cybersecurity up to date.
Conclusion
Hopefully, you will have learned about what cyber and data risk compliance is, what its impacts are, and how you can start applying it to your business. The importance of compliance continues to grow in this modern age of technology, with the number of cyberattacks continuously on the rise. With current cyber risks making any company a potential target for an attacker, you need to prepare yourself with a compliance programme to avoid unpleasant and unnecessary outcomes.
