The Ultimate Guide To Compliance Automation
Completing a security compliance audit can feel like a necessary evil for many organizations. Similar to training for a marathon, the process toward compliance is often anticipated as long and grueling—even though you know you’ll have accomplished a huge milestone at the end. Just as finishing a marathon is achievable with proper training, compliance audits can be less arduous and more efficient with the compliance automation tools in place.
Considering today’s quickly evolving threat landscape, organizations are typically required to be compliant with security regulations or have certain security controls in place to do business with their customers. It’s more important than ever to view compliance audits as an integral part of culture, rather than as an annual nuisance that everyone wants to complete as quickly as possible.
Compliance automation software can help. Automation technology supports both the audit firm and organizations being audited through the compliance audit with ease. Automation reduces manual processes errors and provides greater clarity on how to mediate risks.
In this guide, we explore the role of compliance automation solutions and how organizations and audit firms can not only use automation tools to benefit overall security and compliance processes but also how to find and integrate the right automation tools for every unique environment.
The Growing Role of Technology in Compliance
At its core, automation is about combining the manual with the technical. Even before the invention of the computer, humans automated the production processes with external tools. When the wheel was invented, humans were able to move materials from one place to another at a quicker pace. Similarly, the shovel helped develop farming and build communities.
Today, automation is typically thought of as technology that simplifies certain processes. In a single click, modern day automation updates our personal devices or instantly corrects misspelled words. We can buy vacuums that automatically sweep our floors or set our coffee makers to brew us a cup before we start our day. And now, many security and compliance processes can be automated.
Prior to the 2000s, technology was relatively absent in compliance, and regulations were mainly oriented toward public initiatives. For example, the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) regulatory requirements began in 1906 with the passage of the Pure Food and Drugs Act to provide basic protections to consumers, such as product labels.
As the years progressed further into the 20th century, compliance was largely a part of organizations working with governments and dealing with regulatory and legal requirements. In the 1960s, compliance became more regulatory, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) formed certain requirements, such as the obligation to hire compliance officers. In 1998, once consumers began using the internet more frequently, the Data Protection Act was passed in order to protect personal data stored on computers or within organized paper filing systems.
During this time, report preparation was completed manually with hard-copy submissions, and monitoring was either completed in-person or by listening to telephone recordings. Since there was no possible way of monitoring compliance in real-time, auditors assessed only a select group of documents, a limitation which meant there was always the possibility of undetected issues.
In the 2000s, as standards like PCI, SOC 2, and ISO 27001 began to emerge alongside the rise of cloud services and globalization, compliance regulation became more complex, and the need for better compliance processes increased. Risk assessments became the foundation of compliance automation programs, and technology helped streamline the formal risk assessment process by centralizing data, conducting analyses, and facilitating prioritization.
Key Dates in the History of Compliance
1900s—Compliance regulations were mainly oriented for public initiatives
1960s—Compliance became more regulatory with SEC requirements to hire compliance officers
1998—Data Protection Act passed seven years after the introduction of the internet
2004—PCI was introduced
2005—ISO 27001 was introduced
2010—The AICPA introduced SOC 2
2022—The number of organizations who use automation solutions jumped from 25% to 72%
While compliance automation has been around for several decades, more advanced platforms have recently come to the market as an integral tool for organizations seeking to mature their security and compliance posture. The A-LIGN 2022 Compliance Benchmark Report revealed a rise in popularity among compliance automation solutions. In 2021, only 25% of surveyed organizations used automation software to prepare for their audits and assessments. In 2022, that number jumped to 72%.
What is Compliance Automation?
Compliance automation tools help scale business quicker, ensuring faster response rates and more hands-on consulting from auditors. With cyberattacks on the rise, many organizations choose to use compliance automation software to streamline their audit, which ultimately speeds up the engagement process and reduces costs, even when working closely with an auditor.
Without security compliance automation, auditors are left to manually test controls. This testing takes the majority of time at the beginning of the audit during a readiness assessment.
Through automated control testing, the automation tool flags issues for a consultant to remediate, rather than your organization going through an often lengthy process of interviews and gathering materials for the engagement team.
Beyond the readiness assessment, there are many compliance processes that can be automated with the right tools. Here are a few commonly automated security procedures:
System updates: Restore or change certain software through an automated push on your personal or work device.
System hardening: Configure your server, application, and network devices automatically to reduce security risks and produce reports at a much faster rate.
Security scorecards: Through automation, get your platform to ingest data to show trends over time to see if your security program is on or off track so that you can take action more timely.
The type of automation organizations use also depends on the industry. For example, the medical field obtains a great deal of personal information, which is regulated under HIPAA laws. A healthcare-related automation platform can provide fast, up-to-date, and secure data for organizations as they continuously care for patients.
Compliance Automation Benefits
Today, the regulatory landscape changes quickly, and keeping up with its evolutions can be difficult. That, in turn, can increase the risk of non-compliance—resulting in the possibility of financial losses, lawsuits, fines, and even a damaged reputation.
Compliance automation helps to manage and reduce these risks. With the right tools, organizations can continually and automatically track new or updated regulations, allowing for quicker responses to changes without the burden of manual techniques.
Compliance automation is also a cost-savings benefit. An IBM study shows that organizations with fully deployed security AI and automation experienced average breach costs of $2.9 million, compared to an average $6.71 million at organizations without security AI and automation. That’s an 80% difference. And while compliance platforms may take away elements of the human touch, ultimately, security automation allows consultants to keep up with changing technology and focus on what they do best—providing clients with support and knowledge for security best practices.
Overall, automation makes it easier to manage compliance workloads, implement and document internal controls, simplify data collection, and track audit requests. In addition, compliance automation is vital to:
Reducing compliance costs;
Improving governance;
Increasing visibility into organizational processes;
Better identify, analyze, manage, and monitor risks; and,
Maintain data security and privacy.
Compliance monitoring is also easier with automation. With automated tools, organizations are more likely to detect potential risks, and then fix those risks before they can cause damage to an organization’s assets, customers, or reputation.
Automating the Compliance Process
Now that you know the why of compliance automation, you might be wondering about the how. Take a look at the following steps for organizations to take in order to get started identifying compliance processes for automation.
Compliance assessment—Organizations should complete a comprehensive assessment of the regulations, standards, and policies needed to comply with to better understand how automation can best help their specific environment.
Process mapping—Once the compliance requirements are identified, organizations can map out existing processes and workflows in order to identify areas that can be automated.
Platform selection—The organization will then research and select the appropriate compliance automation platform that will automate their compliance processes.
Implementation and integration—Once an organization has selected the right automation tools, they can integrate these systems into their infrastructure.
Partner with a third-party auditor—After an organization has implemented their new system into their infrastructure, they can partner with a third-party auditor to ensure a completely automated and seamless auditing process.
Automation rules and workflows—Organizations will define the rules and workflows that come with their selected platform and determine how compliance tasks are completed. This can include data collection, validation, reporting, and notifications.
Continuous monitoring and reporting—This is a key aspect of compliance automation, as it involves tracking compliance performance, identifying potential issues, and creating solutions to address those issues.
Training and governance—The final step to compliance automation is employee training and providing ongoing governance to ensure an organization knows how to use the tools effectively and their compliance program is continuously aligned with organizational goals.
Choosing the Right Compliance Automation Tools
It’s all about finding the right tools that work for a specific organization. We’ve provided some tips and best practices when it comes to deciding on the best automation tools and making it work for specific business environments.
Research, research, research—There are currently many options on the market for automation platforms. Taking the first step often means conducting a search on individual platforms. Reading reviews for different automation tools, and scoping out the difference in platforms will help organizations get the best tool for their team and clients.
Scope out what’s not needed—Along with studying up on options, it’s important to figure out what isn’t needed. Automation platforms differ from industry to industry, and there are a great deal of options out there. By minimizing what tools don’t fit your clients’ needs first, you can narrow your scope to what will benefit the organization the most.
Get buy-in from senior management—Security is often a top-down process. When organizations have the green light for security automation from leadership, those processes and best practices often trickle down to the rest of the team. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.
Compliance Automation Processes and Best Practices for Implementation
With a plan and the right automation platforms in place—and alignment with the auditor—it’s time to integrate these tools and processes into the organization’s infrastructure.
Knowing which tasks and priorities to automate is the first step as well as making sure all stakeholders understand the objectives and benefits of the project. Organizations will work with their compliance vendor to implement the platform into their environment, and once set up, it’s important to test it and train all employees who will be using the interface. Finally, the organization will continue to monitor and optimize results to fit their goals.
When working with a new compliance automation platform, organizations will want to keep the following best practices in mind to assure their compliance program is benefiting the organization in a way that makes sense and provides them with the benefits they need.
Start with objectives—Document clear objectives for an automation program. This will help organizations choose the best tools for their specific requirements.
Implement an automated risk intelligence system—A risk intelligence system should consider the organization’s specific risk tolerance and calculate risk scores in order to determine the appropriate mitigations and solutions.
Identify controls—Organizations should get to know compliance and risk management requirements in order to identify required controls. If some controls are already in place, they can perform a gap analysis to see where remediation is necessary.
Always have a manual plan—While automation has many benefits, it’s still necessary to have backup. As we’ve seen in the past few years, unexpected events like COVID or natural disasters can occur, so it’s important to keep a human risk and compliance team to mitigate the most critical risk events that automation cannot handle.
Key Features to Look for in Compliance Automation Software
While researching the best-fit compliance automation platform, it’s important to know what features to take into account. The following key features will help narrow the scope when choosing an automation platform that works best for an organization.
Scalability and Flexibility
For compliance automation that works within an organization’s scope, it’s important to look for a system whose rules, reviews, workflows, certifications, and notifications can be built within the software and scale with business. This helps avoid costly development assistance.
Similarly, a flexible compliance system will ultimately help an organization’s team members in the long run by saving the time and resources it takes to align with specific organizational policies. A good compliance automation system should adapt to an organization’s environment, not the other way around.
Integration Capabilities
Compliance automation is meant to free a team from manual and repetitive tasks, helping to focus on the bigger picture—like policy creation, employee training, regulation review, and creating compliance strategy. When looking for a compliance system, find a platform that best integrates with key supporting systems—like HR, CRM, or expense systems—for optimal efficiency.
Real-time Updates and Monitoring
The sign of a good compliance management software is one that delivers real-time alerts on important changes to sensitive data and can continually respond to events that match predetermined risk conditions.
Even with automation, there will always be some sort of manual component. The configurations should allow compliance team members the ability to continually monitor parameters and highlight issues that need further investigation.
Automated Reporting Capabilities
Reports are a big component of compliance automation platforms. As you’re researching compliance software, look for systems that have reporting options such as the ability to save preferred layouts and common reports so organizations can share these reports across their team for improved efficiency.
It’s also helpful for compliance automation solutions to:
Cover required fields for daily operations and auditing purposes;
Generate a wide variety of data, views, and reports;
Be automatically configured to send to senior managers, supervisors, or other team members when needed;
Build new reports or modify layouts, grouping, and filtering of existing reports without vendor support; and,
Remain accurate and valid at all times.
Security Features
Security is a must with compliance automation software in order to protect client, organizational, and employee data. Make sure compliance platforms and supporting vendors are committed to meeting an organization’s security requirements and have a mature security framework in place.
Don’t be afraid to ask questions like:
How is the data stored?
Where is the data hosted?
What protection measures do you have in place?
Begin Your Compliance Automation Journey
Compliance automation is no longer a luxury tool for organizations who want to achieve compliance—it’s a necessity. While the road toward compliance might feel overwhelming, relying on advanced technology can make the process much simpler for an organization to reach their compliance goals.
Not only do compliance automation solutions help to better identify, analyze, manage, and monitor risks, but they improve governance and organizational processes. In the end, compliance automation solutions save organizations time and resources and keep teams organized to manage current and future risks.
By making sure an organization’s priorities are in order and understanding the key features of the available automation tools, compliance audits are not only relatively painless but actively beneficial to both organizations and clients. Focus on what you do best, and let a compliance automation platform be the solution to your regulatory requirements.
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