Thinking beyond compliance: Security as a business strategy

Aligning Compliance & Security Strategies to Reduce Enterprise Risk

While a critical foundation of strong security strategy, compliance is just the tip of the spear. To truly minimize enterprise risk and become a securityfocused organization, it’s critical to think beyond compliance.

The Reality of Compliance

Compliance creates a minimally viable standard. A compliant organization is not necessarily a secure one. And vice versa. Regulations and laws are specifically designed to be broad enough to accommodate a variety of organizations. This means they don’t necessarily account for organization-specific data, third party cyber risks, and business continuity plans. Additionally, regulations and requirements are often behind technology trends, and consumer demands. Becoming proactive against threats requires thinking beyond checkboxes and baseline requirements. Compliance can serve as a foundation to reach a more mature level of enterprise security. The key is aligning compliance to broader security efforts and integrating measures, practices, and policies. In doing so, compliance and security can work together to reduce enterprise risk.

Aligning Compliance & Security to Business Strategy

Aligning compliance and security strategies to broader business goals is critical to minimize enterprise risk. This integration helps organizations build trust with their stakeholders, improve brand reputation, and increase operational efficiency. Which, ultimately, demonstrates a commitment to risk management.

Here are three steps organizations can take to start aligning compliance and security to broader business strategies:

1. Risk Quantification: Calculating the financial impact of compliance measures and understanding how they influence an organization’s risk profile is a great place to start. There is an inherent risk in noncompliance, which generally manifests as fines, loss of contracts, or other business repercussions. Compliance frameworks do not directly target cyber threats; their primary intent is often to reduce exposure to such threats. However, the business imperative for compliance frequently stems from the necessity to avoid fines and fulfill mandatory requirements. Quantification aims to identify the potential financial impact of noncompliance compared to the cost of implementing controls. Similarly, the costs associated with data loss, exposure, downtime, and other security incidents must be weighed against the expense of implementing preventative security controls. By putting hard dollars and cents around the impact of compliance on security, leaders can get buy-in and adoption from the business.
2. Control-Based Approach: Organizations often need to comply with multiple frameworks, such as HIPAA, NIST, and ISO standards. By mapping these frameworks to a common set of controls, organizations can streamline their compliance efforts. Many frameworks have overlapping requirements, a controls-based approach allows organizations to test and measure controls once and apply the results to multiple frameworks, reducing effort and ensuring comprehensive compliance. Furthermore, adopting a control-based approach is essential for maturing from a reactive, point-in-time compliance program to a proactive, continuous monitoring posture, which is crucial for most organizations.
3. Cross-Functional Collaboration: To effectively manage enterprise risk, not only should compliance and security leaders collaborate closely but also work cross-functionally with stakeholders from across the business, including legal for compliance, procurement for vendor risk, IT control owners, and business stakeholders who make risk decisions. By integrating security risk management into broader enterprise risk programs, organizations can ensure a unified approach. This collaboration helps align compliance and security efforts with overall business objectives, ensuring that all measures support the organization’s strategic goals.

Ensuring compliance is a crucial starting point for any organization. By understanding and meeting compliance requirements, organizations lay a solid foundation for more advanced security measures. Ultimately, a holistic approach that incorporates compliance and proactive security ensures regulatory adherence while strengthening the overall risk posture of the organization.