Best Practices For Building A Cyber Security Compliance.

As cyber threats become more dangerous, a single data breach may rip each department apart. That’s why data security compliance is everyone’s responsibility on a company from the IT department to the business owner.

That’s why authorities bring up new standards and requirements to keep online businesses and their customers safe from cyberattacks. However, building cyber security compliance might be complicated, so we brought the best practices together to help you out.

1-) Educate your IT security professionals on compliance

IT security teams are the ones who will actually build compliance by adjusting your network and cybersecurity infrastructure.

 Before going any further, you need to educate them on the specific requirements. They can’t create a compliant business without knowing what to protect or use.

Keep in mind that there are multiple major requirements such as FISMA for the US or GDPR for the European Union. So, your compliance process is highly related to the binding standards. You can learn all about these standards from this page and educate your team.

2-) Conduct frequent risk analysis

Data breaches can always happen no matter how protected your network is. Sometimes you encounter new types of cyberattacks that are basically unknown to your security system.

This means that you always need to assess your network and reveal the risk levels of different types of data. Start by specifying all the pieces of your network your employees can access.

Then, categorize these data by confidentiality grades; for example, ID numbers of your customers are high-risk information where order numbers might be less confidential.

After you define every piece of information you have, analyze the risks by considering the cyber threats and thinking about the potential cost of a data breach.

This process will help you weigh more in highly confidential data to exercise the right policies and protect your network.

3-) Use the latest cybersecurity services and controls

One of the most important things about cyber security compliance is having the right tools in your arsenal to protect your network against malicious users. You need to use the latest services and security controls.

Federal Communications Commission’s guideline on creating a comprehensive security structure is a great start. After you learn about these controls, choose the most suitable ones for your network.

These services may, and should, include data encryption protocols, firewalls, VPN, and verification tools. Cybersecurity controls automate your threat detection and response while also building a superior structure.

4-) Limit access to sensitive data

Only focusing on the prevention policies for external threats is a big mistake. Most companies believe data breaches will come from outside, but that’s not always true.

Employee-related threats to the corporate data are significant and according to IBM’s report, insider incidents take two months to contain. Thus, you need to be very careful not to grant access to sensitive data to every employee.

One of the methods to ensure sensitive data security is layering access permissions; giving access to personal data to specific team members, maybe only supervisors. The trick is categorizing the network and creating an access scheme based on position and verification.

5-) Secure backups of your network

Secure backups are the last response to a network failure or ransomware attack. You need to have the latest version of the network securely backed up at all times. These backups will let your IT team quickly recover from potential incidents.

Protecting your network from deletion and tampering is also a crucial part of cyber security compliance. Encrypted backups are the most straightforward yet effective way to take action against data corruption or private data loss.

Don’t forget that providing business continuity and restoring quickly from attacks go a long way to maintaining compliance.

Takeaway

Building cyber security compliance is a process that includes multiple actors and actions for success. We know it’s a long and challenging path, but proven practices make it much easier. Before you do anything else to build compliance, make sure you have these recommendations in place. They will collectively help your company become transparent, protected, and action-ready against cyber attacks. Business data is the single most valuable asset of companies and compliance ensures it’s secure.