How can organizations prepare for compliance and the auditors who work hard to find things their organization forgot to do?

IT policy compliance is more important than ever as the vast majority of business and government today is done with IT. Businesses use e-commerce sites to take orders from customers online, and brick-and-mortar businesses use software for back-office accounting and order management. This use of IT brings operational risks that can have widespread negative impact, and that’s what captures the attention of policy makers to create laws to protect company and customer data.

IT policy compliance is the implementation and management of information technology in accordance with accepted standards. Using the right approach can help a company manage its IT policy compliance in order to reduce operational risks and protect valuable data. This article provides 10 steps to help organizations prepare for compliance and the auditors who work hard to find things their organization forgot to do.

#1. Remember that IT compliance is about people, processes and technology
Many companies put too much emphasis on the technology and end up failing audits due to their lack of attention on people and processes. While IT makes this compliance ecosystem more complicated, using the right approach can help a company to automate its controls and controls monitoring.

#2. Understand the Importance of IT in policy compliance
Compliance is about conformity with accepted standards. Usually, this means obeying laws and regulations that apply to your business. IT is so important in policy compliance because of the crucial part it plays in the operation of modern businesses, and compliance often relates to the way your organization uses IT. IT compliance is the implementation and management of IT in accordance with accepted standards. This includes technical standards, and how people use that technology in the course of business operations.

3. Determine the Relevant Laws and Regulations
Laws and regulations articulate the ‘policies’ governing their requirements. Examples include the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX) to regulate financial reporting, the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLBA) to regulate non-public personal information (including financial data), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to regulate protected health information processed by health care organizations, and many others. You can’t begin the process of policy compliance without knowing which laws and regulations apply to your company.

#4. Ascertain What Controls Apply to the Laws and Regulations
Controls are the technical and process-oriented means to comply with policy. Controls are specified by various government and industry standards, such as Control Objectives for Information and Related IT (COBIT), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), International Standards Organization (ISO), and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). As with laws and regulations, compliance requires that you determine which controls apply to your organization. Auditors rely heavily on these controls, which are standard procedures for IT policy compliance.

#5. Align IT Policy Compliance and Security with the Business
Aligning compliance with business entails understanding your organization’s culture. Is it highly process-driven, or does it have more of an ad-hoc, chaotic way of doing things? If it’s the former, issuing detailed policies may be adequate for ensuring compliance. But if it’s the latter case (a common situation!), you need controls that are preventative and detective in nature. Your controls should address the specific business risks related to policy. Executives buy in more when you can speak their language of business. Doing this also helps auditors to understand the reasons why your organization deployed particular controls, or perhaps decided to accept certain levels of risk.

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