According to a study of 117 organizations conducted by Gartner in late 2020, IT compliance spending was destined to plateau after witnessing several years of unprecedented growth. It is mainly due to the disruption caused by the new COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, the burden on legal and compliance teams has also increased as they now find themselves navigating a barrage of organizational risks in a remote work environment.
Today, artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and continuous compliance and integrations dominate the IT compliance landscape. But the need of the hour is to decipher what it means for small businesses and how they can capitalize on these concepts to set up a security program.
As you explore this topic, you need to keep in mind the truth that robust IT systems are not synonymous with the most efficient or productive tools for employees. Compliance can only be achieved when people fully understand and are comfortable with a specific security process.
Small and midsize businesses need to recognize or identify exactly what will work in their compliance environment. To do so, they must be guided by a fundamental understanding of ongoing compliance and how to identify right-sized integrations and automation.
Continuous Compliance Decoding
Continuous compliance implies having knowledge about how well the control environment is working. It means you know how your organization’s controls are monitored and work in sync with specific policies. The concept of compliance assumes that a robust compliance environment exists and that there are people who remain accountable for measuring performance.
It should be noted that it makes no sense to assess your compliance landscape only in specific periods. For example, evaluating it only at audit times. You must integrate compliance assessment throughout the business life cycle. In simple words, continuous compliance should become a state of mind of the organization rather than a series of metrics. Everyone should have the controls and processes. But this is easier said than done for an organization in a state of change or expansion.
Decoding integrations for compliance
Integration means the ability for a compliance solution provider to get audit documents into an integrated platform to share with a client. The role of integration becomes crucial when you need to collect evidence. It can save you a lot of time during these activities. It means owning those products that can connect to your fulfillment solution provider. For startups naturally marked by labor-intensive processes, integrations like a documented workflow or Google Forms are a great option.
According to the latest Governance-Risk-Compliance or GRC trends, integrations are essential for organizations to scale their compliance programs. Integrations make communication and collaborations more seamless, eliminate all the manual or laborious work that goes around collecting evidence, and make ongoing compliance and monitoring a reality.
What does Effective Compliance Automation mean?
Automation means the ability to reduce a human-operated task to a data model and set and configure code for repeatability. The practice of compliance requires a lot of human work. Therefore, we cannot fully apply the term automation to it. However, the collection of audit evidence through integration can fit into the concept of an automated solution. Such automation ensures fast evidence collection tasks.
Small and medium-sized businesses can take advantage of automated fulfillment concepts by first looking at those tasks that cannot conventionally be executed without a consultant. You need to determine if that activity can be replicated between consultants. A good example here would be conducting an annual risk assessment. Another apt example is benchmarking exercises between your company’s cybersecurity policies against a single standard. A carefully designed automated system can achieve nearly 95% efficiency, even for the most complicated tasks.
Today, integration is constantly changing, mainly because common technologies are constantly changing. Therefore, start-ups may not see the effect of built-in automation. The correct course of action for such organizations is to automate repeatable security practices. For example, they can integrate checks and balances instead of investing in an expensive tool.
Understanding the value of adaptive compliance
Beyond automation, adaptability is the most important parameter when evaluating compliance platforms. Adaptive compliance enables companies to properly integrate new controls, risks, and evidence collection needs. Basically, adaptive compliance systems are designed to manage security practices that complement your organization.
As companies expand, their compliance environment matures as well. They can edit a small percentage of their controls and increase the general controls by 5 percent. During an audit, a powerful compliance management system will allow companies to integrate control modifications. Tracking these modifications is crucial as the auditor will need some ongoing proof of compliance. Therefore, the ability to adapt or adjust your cybersecurity policies will allow your organization to become a more efficient version of itself.
An adaptive compliance inspection module allows companies to monitor and manage all inspection activities. Users can streamline the entire audit lifecycle, from audit scheduling to electronic report production. You can properly measure knowledge and progress with it.
Last words
For small and medium-sized businesses, it all comes down to making that automation approach a priority that fully aligns with your organizational goals. Keep in mind that your priorities will change over time, so you need a system that can adjust to changes in base levels.
Your focus should always be on incorporating flexible technologies and investing in the ideal fulfillment technology to ensure you are always driving innovation and value delivery. Contact Ezofis, an automation management company that excels in providing automation solutions for small businesses and startups.
