Managed Solution- Compliance Support as a Service

Written By: Sara Cardoza

As technology continues to expand and become more complex (and the more it begins to connect all our critical data) the need for compliance and regulation will continue to expand right along with It — and as it should!  Compliance is meant to be an ally… but without proper management it can quickly become the enemy. While many see compliance as more red tape, the truth is failure to comply with regulations can lead to expensive fees and fines. Managed Solution can help boost your compliance and help your business get closer to you compliance goal.

What is Compliance & Security Management?

In the IT world, compliance management around governance, risk and compliance is the process of ensuring a company or organization consistently complies with federal and state laws, industry requirements, vendor best practices, cyber insurance policies as well as post-breach protocol when it comes to their technology and data management.

In many ways when someone says “compliance,” what they really mean is documentation… and lots of it. Compliance is a big, complex collection of paperwork and data of all kinds, and compliance management is making sure all of that is organized, and more importantly, up to industry standard.

 Why Automate Compliance Management?

Because the world of compliance is so complex (and continues to evolve) it’s critical to make sure your organization has its T’s crossed and I’s dotted.  Like it or not, there’s a cost to compliance. BUT, research has shown it’s much more expensive not to follow the mandated industry regulations… in fact, up to 2.71 times more costly. The bottom line: compliance can be a headache, but implementing a consistent, effective solution saves money.

The good news is you don’t have to try to tackle compliance alone. That’s where Compliance Manager and Managed Solution comes into play. Compliance Manager is a cloud-based solution that automates the data gathering and reporting required to order to meet the necessary internal and external auditor expectations.

It’s a one-stop shop for:

Key Compliance Manager Features

Compliance Manager is a robust tool that reduces risk by simplifying and streamlining your IT security documentation. And more than that, it makes sure everyone on your team is onboard and has one, easy-to-use platform to store, access and manage their part of the process.

Here are some of the key features: 

  1. Customizable Documentation & Processes. Compliance Manager is a role-based solution, meaning you can tailor it to meet your specific IT compliance needs and workflows. So, whether you’ve created your own company-specific standards or need help complying with industry regulations, each report and process can be adjusted accordingly, giving you the flexibility to simultaneously manage multiple compliance standards and information security protocols from one centralized location.
  2. Centralized Management. Because compliance involves many different data points and stakeholders, centralizing the information and access is key to successful management. An automated solution provides self-serve portals for both employees and vendors, allowing you to automate a variety of tasks and collect necessary data and documentation for compliance verification.
  3. Employee-Focused Tracking. Organize employee-specific training courses, assignments, and policy acknowledgements, upload policy documents and track employee compliance and reporting. All of this is accessible from an easy-to-use IT admin access dashboards which allows you to access and manage your employee’s compliance requirements and activity quickly and easily.
  4. Vendor Risk Assessment & Tracking. House and manage both permanent employee and vendor details all within a single solution and with the option to provide a unique vendor login, vendor assessments, status tracking, surveys, and more.
  5. Compliance Manager can integrate with IT Glue, VulScan, VSA, and Bullphish among other separate technologies to leverage an even more distinct degree of control and customization.
  6. Automated Reporting. Compliance Manager automatically generates custom plans, procedures, risk analyses, milestone reports, auditor checklists, supporting documents and more which update based on data and information supplied to the program.
  7. Compliance Templates. As compliance grows, so does Compliance Manager’s compliance template database, meaning you don’t have to start from scratch. Some of the most popular templates to-date include:

Leveraging a Managed Solution

 A tool alone is not enough to reach compliance. Let Managed Solution’s compliance team help your business through the lengthy process. Our compliance team will ensure progress and work hand in hand with you to integrate Compliance Manager into your existing ecosystem.

Interested in learning more? Schedule a call today and learn how Managed Solution can help boost your compliance and help your business get closer to you compliance goal. Not ready for a direct call? We are hosting a webinar on July 28th, click here to register. Attendees will receive a FREE 30 minute consultation with our vCIO to see if our Compliance as a Service tool can work for you!

What Are Some Best Practices for Compliance Management?

Being compliant with all the industry rules and regulations will help your financial or healthcare organization stay on top of the situation and reduce the risk of sales losses, legal fees, and fines, brand reputation and more. It is for this reason why compliance management should be a top priority for all IT executives.

It will grant better internal control, allowing you to determine which employees will have access to company data and what they can do with it. Similarly, it will tell them who they can share that data with internally or externally.

Also, by maintaining compliance, you will also be taking the necessary security measures to protect yourself, your organization, and your clients from security breaches. But when it comes to the healthcare and finance industries, and being compliant with all the rules and regulations, it can be somewhat of a daunting challenge.

Things like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), as well as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the future California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), just to name several, organizations need some best practices to keep them in line with everything. Here are several examples.

Involve Colleagues and Employees in the Process

Any compliance program, regardless of its thoroughness, will not be effective unless staff members are fully aware of the regulations and the impact they have on your organization. You should make it a company-wide effort to identify any gaps within the program as well as how they should be addressed.

Auditing and Monitoring

To have a successful compliance program, you need to perform internal monitoring and verification regularly. These are essential in identifying and correcting any errors that may exist or will occur. An audit may be performed once per year to look at the overall effectiveness of your compliance program. Monitoring the program, on the other hand, should be performed more frequently, such as weekly or monthly to confirm that everything is working as it should.

Automating Key Tasks and Processes

Wherever possible, tasks and processes need to be automated. Automation is a driving force across all industries as IT teams are striving to bring more agility, quality, and speed to, otherwise, manual tasks. When it comes to regulation compliance, automation will be able to accelerate this delivery significantly.

Microsoft Connected Health Platform (CHP)

The Microsoft Connected Health Platform (CHP) is a tool that provides a host of best practices and guidelines for organizations in the healthcare industry to provide many efficient, flexible, scalable and secure e-health solutions for patient engagement. Based on the principles of the Connected Health Framework (CHF), Microsoft CHP will provide many offerings for optimizing health information and communication technology.

It includes deployment guidance, prescriptive architecture, design, as well as solution accelerators. Tailored specifically for the health environment and Microsoft infrastructure models and tools, the CHP will be able to deliver and manage on-premises or cloud solutions, as part of your compliance management program.

Takeaway

Complying with all the rules and regulations is not something that should be taken lightly. Nevertheless, it's not something that cannot be achieved. Together with Managed Solution, you can make it happen.

Our Shadow IT Assessment allows you to uncover applications and tools installed on your network, and ultimately allows you to discover which of these were intentional versus accidental and authorized versus unauthorized. Our tools allow us to determine if these tools and applications are compliant and take the right next steps based on our findings. Learn more about our assessment.