Cybersecurity compliance is a process that encompasses the policies, procedures, and adherence to regulatory standards designed to safeguard an organization’s digital assets and infrastructure from external threats. It is a critical aspect of modern digital defense strategies, notably external attack surface management (EASM).
EASM assists organizations in achieving and maintaining cybersecurity compliance or simply security compliance by combining attack surface discovery, vulnerability prioritization, vulnerability remediation, and continuous monitoring. Each of these steps play an important role in helping organizations achieve and maintain compliance with specific regulatory requirements and industry standards.
Cybersecurity Compliance: A Deep Dive
What Does Cybersecurity Compliance Entail?
Cybersecurity compliance entails a comprehensive approach to ensuring that an organization’s digital infrastructure is aligned with regulatory requirements, industry standards, and internal policies that aim to protect against external threats.
The key measures organizations should take to ensure security compliance include:
- Legal compliance: Comply with relevant laws and regulations governing data protection and cybersecurity like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
- Industry standard compliance: Adhere to industry-specific standards and frameworks for cybersecurity best practices like International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission (ISO/IEC) 27001.
- Risk assessment: Conduct regular risk assessments to identify potential vulnerabilities and threats to the external attack surface.
- Vulnerability management: Continuously scan for vulnerabilities, assess their severity, and apply patches or implement other remediation measures to reduce the risk of exploitation.
- Security control implementation: Implement a range of security controls like employing network firewalls to protect against external attacks.
- Incident response planning: Have robust incident response plans to address external attacks effectively.
- Auditing and assessments: Conduct regular audits and assessments to ensure cybersecurity measures are effectively implemented and maintained.
- Employee training: Conduct training programs to educate employees about security best practices and raise awareness about the importance of safeguarding against external attacks.
All of these aspects should be covered in an organization’s cybersecurity compliance plan.
What Is a Cybersecurity Compliance Plan and How Can Organizations Build One?
A cybersecurity compliance plan is a structured approach organizations develop to ensure their information systems and data handling practices meet regulatory requirements, industry standards, and cybersecurity best practices.
Here are some notable steps in building a cybersecurity compliance plan.
- Identify the applicable laws, regulations, and industry standards that govern your organization’s operations.
- Conduct a thorough risk assessment to identify potential vulnerabilities, threats, and risks to your organization’s information assets. Leveraging an EASM platform can streamline this process by providing complete visibility into your external attack surface, enabling rapid identification of potential risks and vulnerabilities.
- Develop comprehensive cybersecurity policies and procedures that address the specific requirements outlined in the regulatory frameworks you identified.
- Implement technical and procedural controls to mitigate the identified risks and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.
- Educate employees about cybersecurity best practices, your organization’s policies and procedures, and their roles and responsibilities in maintaining compliance.
- Implement mechanisms for continuous monitoring of systems, networks, and data to detect and respond to security incidents in a timely manner. Built-in EASM capabilities can help optimize this process, enabling automated and continuous asset discovery and vulnerability detection.
- Conduct regular audits and reviews of cybersecurity controls and processes to ensure ongoing compliance with regulatory requirements and industry standards.
- Maintain detailed documentation of cybersecurity compliance efforts, including policies, procedures, risk assessments, audit reports, incident response logs, and others.
- Cybersecurity threats constantly evolve, so it’s essential to continuously evaluate and improve your compliance plan.
These steps should be tailored to an organization’s specific needs and regulatory requirements.
Key Takeaways
- Cybersecurity compliance is a process that encompasses the policies, procedures, and adherence to regulatory standards designed to safeguard an organization’s digital assets and infrastructure from external threats.
- Security compliance in the context of EASM requires organizations to adopt a proactive approach to identify, assess, and mitigate risks that exposed assets and external threats pose.
- Building a cybersecurity compliance plan is critical to achieving security compliance.
Ready to find out how Attaxion can support your cybersecurity compliance efforts? Start your 30-day trial now.