The Role of a Compliance Strategy in Mitigating Cyber-Attacks

 

Discussing why, now more than ever, privacy compliance procedures are required to combat cyber-attacks

Cyber-attacks are not uncommon in today's day and age. However, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, cyber-attacks have skyrocketed, with some reports suggesting a 600% rise. At the same time, some anticipate that IoT cyber-attacks will double by 2025. And, with a 0.05 % rate of detection (or prosecution) of such attacks in the United States, it is difficult to conceive the devastation produced by even a modest increase in attacks.

So, what do we do?

Create a systematic compliance effort for your company. A structure that ensures, at the very least, the following:

Having a Comprehensive Compliance Strategy

Many businesses do not have a centralized plan in place to ensure data privacy compliance that is simple yet comprehensive, integrated, quantified, and centralized. This may be achieved by developing a high-level set of principles and documents that outline the measures that must be performed in the case of a privacy compliance risk. By doing so, all stakeholders and organizational areas are provided with a guideline that must be followed with respect to cyber-attacks and threats per existing legislation.

Having Subject Matter Experts in Compliance (SMEs)

Nobody can be an expert in the plethora of regulations that must be followed. One alternative is to assign and train SMEs to be experts in your industry-specific legislation, such as HIPAA or GDPR. This technique would help guarantee a single point of contact for developing legally compliant policies and procedures.

Inventorying and Evaluating Personally Identifiable Information (PII) or Sensitive Personal Information (SPI)

When collecting personal data, it must be recognized and labeled, and businesses must give a way to track it. This will assist you in locating and protecting personal data in compliance with legal and suggested standards.

Creating Data Security Policies and Procedures

A privacy-compliant company has strong administrative, technological, and physical security mechanisms in place to assure data confidentiality, integrity, and availability. This includes the capacity to identify and prohibit unwanted or unlawful data access. Information security must be continually analyzed, monitored, and updated to face emerging risks. Data sharing must also be subject to stringent restrictions and rules.

Creating a Response Strategy

Despite strict attention to data privacy requirements, no system is flawless. Cyberattacks and data breaches continue to outwit even the most sophisticated systems. An efficient data breach response strategy and escalation procedure can reduce the consequences of an incident. Employees in charge of breach response should be trained on these strategies and the usage of escalation channels. As proactive preventative steps against a similar occurrence, the remedial activities in the reaction plan must be done and documented.

Maintaining Appropriate Compliance Documentation

Compliance strategies and processes must be meticulously recorded. Robust information management solutions must also be used to host and maintain all documents, reports, and data. In most cases, businesses assign a single person completely accountable for document security and compliance.

Providing Proof of Compliance

It is not sufficient to know that your compliant management is at par. You must be prepared to show your compliance in the event of an external or internal investigation. Reports and paperwork should make compliance easily verifiable and accessible. Your business should have a mechanism in place for reporting noncompliance and an escalation path that is well established. Consistent adherence to confidentiality standards should also be demonstrated by adequate monitoring, auditing, and control implementation.

To conclude, if a business can prevent data security problems, it can gain substantial reputational benefits. Therefore, base your company policies and compliance regulations on thoroughly comprehending the legal environment impacting personal data. Then implement a complete data privacy compliance system to conform with it so that your legal team can be certain that it adequately satisfies its data privacy duties