Top Tips for Cybersecurity and Compliance in 2021

The ever-changing landscape of industry standards and regulatory requirements means that businesses need to remain cybersecurity compliant constantly. As cyberattacks increase, industry standards organizations need to establish more strict and stringent compliance. But this is not easy, especially for small business owners.

With a wide variety of acronyms and hundreds of controls, it becomes confusing for any business. This is why it’s important to ensure you are cybersecurity compliant by following some simple protocols.

Identifying the Type of Data You Work With 

The industry you work in will determine the type of regulations or laws to comply with. Every state in the US will have data breach notification laws that require you to notify customers if their personal information has been compromised. You need to look at your local authorities and research their compliance requirements. 

Once you’ve done this, you need to determine the type of data that you are storing and processing. This can be an overlap with the states and territories that you operate in. On a basic level, the sensitive information begins with names, date of birth, addresses, and Social Security numbers. 

From there, you need to address the key compliance requirements for your industry, such as the 

HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), the NYDFS Cybersecurity Regulation, FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

Conducting Risk and Vulnerability Assessments 

Every company that needs to remain cybersecurity compliant requires undergoing stringent risk assessments to see if they have flaws in their infrastructure. There is a wide variety of cybersecurity IT services that can help you to conduct a risk assessment. This is vital to determine what the weaknesses are in your armor but also aims to address the benefits and controls you have in place.

Appoint a CISO

A CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) is somebody who can manage your cybersecurity and compliance. However, this is out of reach for many small companies due to the cost of hiring a CISO. However, you can incorporate CISO roles and duties into your organization. You can appoint an individual to be responsible for compliance and cybersecurity, which could be your IT manager, Chief Information Officer (CIO), or your Chief Operating Officer (COO). 

Incorporate Policies and Procedures 

We have to remember that cybersecurity does not just involve technology. It is vital to conduct a wide variety of assessments based on a strict set of policies and procedures. This can include auditing and accountability processes, employee cybersecurity training, as well as continual upskilling.

Addressing your process controls by having the appropriate policies and procedures in place, will help you understand what technology you need to incorporate to benefit your IT infrastructures, such as firewalls, encryption, and anti-virus packages.

Reviewing and Testing 

Once we have the requirements in place, it is vital to ensure that we review and test them regularly. One of the cardinal sins businesses make is that they believe once the systems are in place, they can become very complacent. It’s important that to be cybersecurity compliant, you are aware of the strengths of your systems, but are also aware of the changes in regulation. This is where a CIO can help.

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