As data breaches emerge rapidly, maintaining information privacy and security has become a significant concern in the present-day data-driven world. To protect customer data privacy, the governments and industrial bodies are regularly implementing new laws and regulations while adapting existing ones.
Businesses and IT organizations are compelled to meet data privacy and security standards that apply to their specific industry and geographical location. Even though keeping up with the latest compliance regulations and rules can be both expensive and resource-intensive, organizations must acknowledge that compliance brings significant benefits to the business.
Beyond ensuring compliance and avoiding costly data breaches, here are some of the key benefits of IT security compliance for your business:
How Businesses Benefit from Cyber Security Compliance?
- Avoid fines and penalties
Failing to comply with the latest rules and regulations governing their business can prove costly for companies that find themselves out of compliance. Thus, organizations must be aware of the latest compliance trends and legislations to avoid server fines and penalties. Some of the most common compliances and their respective violation penalties include:
- Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) – USD 100 to USD 50,000 per violation, with a maximum penalty of USD 1.5 million annually
- General Data Protection Act (GDPR) – 4% of a company’s global turnover or 20 million euros, whichever is higher
- Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) – Between USD 5,000 and USD 100,000 per month
- California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) – USD 2,500 to USD 7,500 per violation
Staying compliant will help you avoid these severe fines and penalties.
- Build Customer Trust and Brand Reputation
The real threat of a data breach is often not restricted to business interruption and financial loss but extends to the lasting damage it can have on brand reputation and customer trust. During the time of uncertainty and confusion triggered by a data breach, a robust response is critical to protect customer loyalty and brand reputation.
According to a recent report by Deloitte,
- 59% of customers state that a single data breach would negatively impact their likelihood of preferring the company
- 51% of customers would forgive the company that had one data breach as long as the company quickly addresses the issue
Staying compliant with the latest regulations helps you discover, interpret, and prepare for data breaches that can impact your business and damages your brand reputation and customer trust. Information security compliance helps you avoid putting your brand reputation at risk by compelling you to notify customers about a breach.
- Enhanced Data Management
To maintain compliance with data security regulations, the organizations must keep track of what customers’ sensitive information they gather, know how and where they store the data, and access, handle and modify that information in a streamlined manner.
These requirements compel organizations to adapt and enhance their data management capabilities such that it not only supports privacy but improves operational efficiency.
- Enhanced Security
The compliance regulations require businesses to establish a cybersecurity program, adopt an organization-level cybersecurity policy, and designate a chief information security officer. This, in turn, helps mitigate risks and address data breaches.
- Improved Access Controls and Accountability
Cybersecurity compliances require businesses to establish senior-level accountability for the strategic management of security and cyber risk. Moreover, organizations need to implement effective and appropriate risk management frameworks to monitor and control access to the security systems and databases that contain sensitive customer data.
In Conclusion
Compliance regulations play an essential role in building a robust cybersecurity landscape. However, ensuring compliance does not equal complete cybersecurity. Cybercriminals always find a way to work around the compliances to compromise the security guidelines contained in the regulations. Thus, maintaining multiple regulations to remain compliant without addressing cybersecurity defense can prove detrimental to the organization’s cybersecurity.
In order to stay ahead of the cyber curve, the organizations must develop and manage an advanced cyber security services that goes far beyond specific sets of compliance requirements.
The opinions expressed in this post belong to the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Information Security Buzz.