What Does It Mean for Your Business to Be Compliant?
Whatever industry you’re in, your business has to comply with a certain set of regulatory standards. But what does compliance actually mean? Discover why this is a crucial concern for your organization.
Over the past few years, the business world has witnessed a sharp spike in the number of compliance standards. The tighter regulations have mounted increasing pressure on business leaders to stay on all these guidelines’ safe side.
Nowadays, nearly every industry has its regulations, and keeping track of all of them has become an incredibly demanding task. However, certain standards apply to virtually all businesses regardless of size or industry.
Watch our latest video on compliance to get started:
What Exactly Is Compliance?
Setting aside the dictionary definition, compliance in the context of business IT describes the action of adhering to the rules of a certain industry or federally mandated standard.
Which Are the Common Compliance Standards? Again, as the years have passed, the number of guidelines has grown significantly. Consequently, the task of monitoring compliance could easily become a nightmare if your IT support team isn’t equipped for the challenge. But what are some of the standards that virtually all businesses have to satisfy? Here’s a list of the most common ones:
- SOX: The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is meant to shield shareholders and the general public against accounting errors and fraudulent practices in the enterprise. Among SOX’s many guidelines are rules for storing and holding electronic business records.
- HIPAA: Short for the Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, HIPAA mandates service organizations to standardize digital health records systems. This standard also contains several measures that aim at securing patient confidentiality and private information.
- PCI DSS: An abbreviation for the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards, PCI DSS are a set of policies intended to ensure card transactions (debit, credit, and cash) are secure.
How Can You Become Compliant With All the Necessary Standards?
- Learn About the Standards that Apply to Your Business: Start by listing all the standards that impact your organization, then research all the information you can find on them. A great starting point is looking up implementation specifications on a standard’s governing website if you can find them. These are clearly defined descriptions of the steps you’ll have to take to satisfy a particular standard’s requirements.
- Start Preparations as Early as Possible: If you’re anything like most people, you hate the last-minute rush. At any rate, scrambling around to put everything in order at the last minute produces unnecessary errors, avoidable expenses, and emotional stress.
- Assign a Team to Monitor Your Compliance: But what if your business is just getting off the ground and you can’t afford to hire full-time employees dedicated only to compliance? Because you can’t match the capabilities of large corporations, we suggest appointing an existing member of your team to oversee compliance during the audit period.
- Reach Out to a Trusted IT Services Provider: Exploiting the experience and technical know-how of a reputable managed IT services provider will help fortify your compliance efforts. They may even help you avoid unsuccessful conclusions by identifying gaps in controls.
Looking for the Best Compliance Support in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre?
Our team of experienced technology experts at tech42 is eager to help your organization remain compliant with all the relevant standards.
Contact us now (570) 209-7200 to start planning your first compliance consultation!