Keeping Data Safe: Compliance in the Digital Age

As organizations increasingly adopt hybrid cloud environments and digital workflows, implementing and demonstrating compliance becomes more important and challenging. With data spread across on-prem and cloud servers, establishing strong data governance and strong cybersecurity measures is essential. At the same time, regulations regarding privacy, industry standards, and reporting requirements continue to evolve. Operating effectively in this complex regulatory environment requires a proactive approach to compliance in the digital age.

New technologies like artificial intelligence, blockchain, and automation present promising opportunities for enhanced efficiency, security, and analysis. However, they also introduce new compliance risks related to data ethics, transparency, and bias. Meanwhile, high-profile breaches make it clear that cyber threats are growing more advanced, making vulnerabilities harder to prevent and address. Even with security best practices in place, the expanding digital footprint for most companies provides attackers more potential entry points.

Organizations should take a multifaceted approach to keep data safe and maintain compliance in this dynamic landscape. This includes optimizing security protocols and adopting comprehensive governance policies, updated risk management procedures, and advanced compliance tools. With more data and technology complexity, documentation is critical for adhering to specific mandates. Failing to maintain rigorous compliance postures across these areas leaves companies open to steep remediation costs, reputational damage, and harsh regulatory penalties in the event of non-compliance.

While specific regulations differ by industry, nearly all companies face expanding compliance requirements as legislative bodies attempt to keep pace with technological change. For example, privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA reflect increased concerns about appropriate data collection, storage, and usage practices. They levy stringent transparency, consent, access rights, and data minimization standards. Other emerging regulations address algorithmic accountability, environmental disclosures, human bias in AI systems, and oversight for cryptocurrencies or Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

On top of changing laws, the distributed nature of modern tech infrastructure makes compliance with longstanding regulatory stipulations more complicated, too. Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) have far-reaching implications for financial data, internal controls, and cybersecurity. As these areas rely more heavily on cloud platforms and automated processes, modifying compliance approaches to adapt can be challenging. This same issue applies across heavily regulated sectors like healthcare and insurance as well, where the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) Model Audit Rule (MAR) requirements still apply even as providers transition to more digital operations.

Due to the regulatory volatility and infrastructure complexity introduced by emerging technologies, achieving compliance in today’s digital environment depends on several critical components:

• Comprehensive data governance policies: Data governance provides a framework for managing information assets across their lifecycle in line with operational objectives, risk tolerance levels, and regulatory obligations. These policies formally establish authority, decision flow, oversight procedures, universal data protocols, and accountability measures across all platforms and users for compliance. They facilitate compliance by codifying compliant data usage while enabling visibility into whether established standards are maintained.
• Centralized security safeguards: In distributed technology environments, implementing consistent security controls across all endpoints is imperative to reduce vulnerabilities. Measures like multi-factor authentication, endpoint detection and response solutions, encrypted data transmission, VPN access, and tightly managed user permissions help prevent unauthorized access and leakage that could trigger compliance violations. Conducting frequent audits and tests of these centralized protocols verifies their efficacy as threats evolve.
• Automated compliance monitoring: Technology now allows automated tracking and evaluation of system access, data flows, file modifications, application usage patterns, and other signals to determine if compliant behavior standards are breached. By detecting compliance anomalies in real-time, even across complex technology stacks, automated solutions allow quicker remediation to limit non-compliance fallout before issues spiral.
• Unified visibility and control: Gaining unified visibility into data, workflows, application performance, system access, and user activity is foundational to comprehensive compliance monitoring in digital environments. Similarly, ensuring consistent policy enforcement and maintenance capabilities across different platforms through unified command protocols is equally critical. Without complete cross-stack observability or uniform administrative control, compliance blind spots emerge that mask noncompliant activity until problems reach a boiling point.

While the regulatory climate continues intensifying, cyber threats pose an equally urgent challenge for maintaining compliant operations as breaches can directly instigate noncompliance scenarios. Building robust defenses requires implementing mature risk management processes that:

• Thoroughly identify internal and external threat vectors and monitor them continuously
• Categorize information systems and data types based on sensitivity and prioritize controls accordingly
• Support complex access restrictions aligned with least-privilege and separation of duties principles
• Formalize plans for rapid detection, containment and remediation of any suspected cyberattack to mitigate damages

Conducting frequent risk assessments and testing response capabilities through crisis simulations and table-top exercises ensures an updated understanding the everchanging risk landscape. It also facilitates regular validation that existing compliance-centric security protocols remain effective as new attack techniques emerge.

Lastly, while compliance today involves much more continuous monitoring and maintenance, establishing compliant-by-design systems through rigorous SDLC processes provides a sturdy policy and technology foundation. By fully integrating compliance considerations into system planning, design, development, testing, deployment, and operationalization phases, IT leaders can now significantly enhance and scale compliant environments even as technology footprints grow. This reduces the likelihood deviations that trigger noncompliance.

Ensuring compliance amid constant tech shifts and evolving regulatory guidelines is undoubtedly an immense challenge. However, by centering data governance, implementing air tight security controls, enabling comprehensive visibility and control, integrating automated compliance tracking tools, formalizing robust cyber risk management, and engineering compliant-by-design systems, organizations across sectors can effectively prepare. Establishing these foundational measures provides both defensibility and agility to avoid and respond to noncompliance pitfalls as digital transformation accelerates. While the regulatory climate will remain turbulent, solidifying these compliance pillars provides a path for both capitalizing on emerging technologies’ opportunities while keeping data safe and aligned with oversight stipulations.