Cyber threats are lurking everywhere, and malicious actors are always ready to exploit an organization’s vulnerabilities and weak points. Making your organization cybersecurity compliant is an integral way to protect the confidentiality and integrity of sensitive information. Cybersecurity Compliance means adhering to various regulatory controls and guidelines to safeguard data. These controls vary from industry to industry and come from a variety of sources.

Let us investigate cybersecurity compliance and its benefits in the next section.

 

Cybersecurity Compliance and Why Organizations Need it?

 

Cybersecurity compliance controls are mostly originated from sources like the CIS, NIST Cybersecurity Framework, and ISO 27001. To learn more about these frameworks, please read this comprehensive guide. Complying with privacy and regulatory laws is a necessity for any organization regardless of the company size, location, or industry but it is not an easy pill to swallow. Many organizations find it confusing to implement compliance due to a myriad of acronyms and countless controls. These requirements vary from field to field and can be imposed by either regulatory bodies, law, or private industry groups such s the Payment Card industry.

Let us now move on to the benefits of cybersecurity compliance.

 

Benefits of Cybersecurity Compliance

 

Not all organizations are required by law to be compliant, but it is always a great endeavor to regulate your company’s IT and cybersecurity functions. Here are a few key benefits of being compliant:

 

Proper IT Audit Reports: A company that is cybersecurity compliant can easily produce reports in case of an unexpected audit. If your company is required by law to be compliant then it can save itself from hefty fines and expensive downtime by having audit reports ready for inspection at any given time.

 

Reduced Risks: Compliant systems provide better security protocols and foster a safer environment that can easily deter data breaches. According to research, an average data breach can cost a company more than $3 million, and sadly more than 60 percent of small businesses cannot sustain themselves and get bankrupt after going through a data breach.

 

Customer Trust: Making your organization cybersecurity compliant protects your company’s reputation. The clients gain your trust knowing that your organization is credible and will take their privacy seriously. It also paves a path for your company to help protect the intellectual property of your clients such as software code, trade secrets, and product specifications that further increases your reliability factor. Cybersecurity compliance can no doubt bolster a business and increase customer retention rates in return.

 

Avoiding Fines and Penalties: If an organization ignores mandatory compliance, it can end up facing hefty penalties and possible lawsuits, that come out to be much more costly and damaging to a business than the cost of getting and staying compliant.

 

Operational Efficiency: Companies who are complaint carry consistent systems for managing and storing sensitive data which in turn provides greater operational efficiency.

 

Now that we know the benefits of cybersecurity compliance, let us shed some light on the different types of data that can be subject to compliance.

 

Types of Data Subject to Cybersecurity Compliance

 

Cybersecurity compliance deals with the protection of sensitive data. This mainly consists of personally identifiable information (PII), protected health information (PHI), as well as financial information, and miscellaneous data.

 

Let us now peek into each of these data types.

 

Personally Identifiable Information (PII): This is the distinctive data that can uniquely identify an individual. It can include a range of information from social security numbers, first and last names, mother’s maiden name, date of birth, mailing and email addresses to phone numbers. However, the scope of PII data has increased, thanks to technology and IP addresses, login IDs, social media posts, digital images, biometric data, and behavioral information are now included in this range.

 

Protected Health Information (PHI): This is any information tied to a specific individual’s health history including treatments. It can include a scope of information like medical history, prescription records, records of admissions, medical appointment history as well as insurance records.

 

Financial Information: This information discloses an individual’s payment methods, credit card numbers, and other sensitive financial data that can be manipulated to steal financial resources. Stolen credit cards are rampant and are widely used for unauthorized purchases. Financial information can include social security numbers, bank account numbers, debit card numbers, PINs, credit history, and credit ratings.

 

Miscellaneous Information: This includes any other type of data that could be subject to state, regional, or industry regulations. It can be anything generic like a person’s marital status, race, or religion. IP addresses, email addresses, usernames, passwords, and biometrics like facial recognition can also fall under this category.

In the next section, let us look at Exium’s role in providing cybersecurity compliance solutions for its clients.

 

Exium’s Role in Providing Cybersecurity Compliance Solutions

 

Exium is working diligently to help organizations comply with cybersecurity regulations. Our team of security experts can help pinpoint existing and foreseeable vulnerabilities in network infrastructures. We also analyze every aspect of data security for our clients and recommend modifications and intrusion prevention techniques that can safeguard against potential threats. Our suite of cybersecurity compliance solutions includes log monitoring automation, correlating data, recognizing patterns, alerting, and providing data for compliance and forensics. Our cutting-edge tools accumulate logs from various sources and based on what is seen on those logs, automated alerts are sent to the customers. Best of all, organizations can use Exium cybersecurity tools to comply with regulations for PCI, GDPR, HIPAA, and SOX.

 

Conclusion

 

Cybersecurity compliance is not a small feat and should not be undermined. With the changing technology trends and shifts to cloud-based services, cybercrimes are on a rapid incline. Adhering to regulatory controls is proving difficult for companies as they must keep up with the stringent compliance regulations and requirements, while also catering to the needs of their clients. Fortunately, in these evolving times, companies like Exium are playing their utmost part by offering top-notch cybersecurity solutions, making it easy for overwhelmed clients to reach compliance and stay compliant.