The business world has undergone rapid change over recent years. Nearly every business has a digital component to its operations and conducts at least a portion of its business online. This rapid digitization and move to online processing is affecting businesses of all sizes, from small family stores to giant international corporations. The increase in use of digital and internet technologies has brought an increase in cybercrime. In response, governments and other regulatory bodies have developed sets of standards and regulations aimed at keeping businesses and their clients safe from cyber attack. Your business is required to comply with the any and all regulations that pertain to your operation.
The Importance of Cybersecurity Compliance for Small Businesses
The current threat landscape is marked by developing cyberattacks and growing concerns about data privacy. Smart business people know that no organization is 100% immune to cyber attack. No matter what cyber defenses you deploy, there will always be a hacker or group of criminals that will figure out a way around them. Regulatory compliance acts as a crucial line of defense, promoting best practices and standardizing security measures across industries. These standards and regulations help businesses operate safely and safeguard company and client information. The business achieves compliance by developing and deploying risk-based controls that satisfy regulatory requirements. This not only helps protect organizations from financial loss due to an attack, it also instills trust among customers, partners, and stakeholders who expect their data to be handled responsibly.
Small businesses may think that their operations are too small to attract much attention from cyber criminals—but they would be wrong. Cyber criminals know that small businesses are primarily concerned with building their business and they tend not to spend much time or money on cyber defenses. In 2021, 47% of small businesses with less than 50 employees had no cybersecurity budget. And in 2022, 51% of small businesses had no cybersecurity measures in place at all. But small businesses have the same valuable information that big corporations do and they’re easier pickings. So it’s critical for small businesses to know the regulations and standards with which they need to comply.
Types of Data Subjected to Cybersecurity Compliance
Compliance regulations and standards are often focused on protecting data, whether it lives on company premises or in the cloud, and whether it’s stored in memory or being transmitted or received. The types of data subjected to data protection laws and standards can be grouped into three categories: financial information, personal information, and health information.
- Financial Information: Any data related to money, including credit card and bank account numbers, credit history, PINs, etc.
- Personally Identifiable Information (PHI): Any data that can be attributed to, or used to identify, an individual, including birth dates, names, addresses, social security numbers, etc.
- Protected Health Information: Any data relating to an individual’s health condition or history, including medical and insurance records, prescription history, doctor and hospital visits, etc.
Benefits of Cybersecurity Compliance for Small Businesses
A cyber attack can have drastic and often long-term effects, especially for a small business. Keeping the company safe from cyber attack by complying with applicable rules and standards is essential for maintaining the company’s ability to conduct business without interruption. Protecting data is not only important for the company’s day-to-day business, it is also important for maintaining a positive corporate image and building client trust and loyalty. Compliance standards help businesses take a structured approach to deploying cybersecurity defenses.
<H2> How to Start a Cybersecurity Compliance Program
Many small businesses have the mistaken impression that either compliance doesn’t apply to them, or that it’s difficult to develop a compliance program. But many regulations apply no matter what the size of the business—you need to know the regulations for your industry and which apply to you. You can develop strong compliance programs without financially strapping the company or chewing up significant resources. Here’s how to get started.
1. Creating a Compliance Team
Assuming that you have determined which regulations you need to comply with, the first step is to create a compliance team. This team, which needs to include senior management, will be responsible for organizing the compliance effort, implementing required solutions, and deciding who will be responsible for what. The team also should make it known in the company that every department and every employee is responsible for cyber safety, and that compliance with applicable regulations is essential to the health of the business.
2. Setting Up a Risk Analysis Process
You can’t set up an effective compliance program until you know what you need to protect and what a breach would cost you. Keeping in mind the following steps will help you work through the process:
- Identify: Determine what assets you need to protect, including infrastructure, data, applications, cloud computing, etc.
- Assess: For the assets you have identified, what are the risks of each? It may help to set levels of risk depending on how exposed the asset is.
- Analyze: For each asset or group of assets, determine the likelihood of a breach and what the cost of that breach would be. Assets that are more likely to be breached and more costly to the company should receive the highest priority.
- Mitigate: For each asset or group, decide if you need to immediately deploy resolutions (patches, upgrades, etc.), develop mitigation policies (workarounds, etc.), or accept the risk as is.
3. Setting Controls: How to Mitigate or Transfer Risk
Compliance usually is not one size fits all. Rather,it can be flexible depending on the business’s particular operations. In this step, you need to set up the security controls to either resolve or mitigate your particular cybersecurity risks. A control is any mechanism you deploy—software, hardware or third-party solutions—to detect and mitigate cyber attacks and threats. Some obvious controls are antivirus programs, network firewalls, and data encryption. But just as important are controls such as requiring strong passwords, having access control for sensitive data, training employees on cyber safety, having a patch management program, backing up data regularly, and having incident response plans should a breach occur.
4. Creating Policies
Having all your controls defined and deployed is not enough. You also need to document your cybersecurity processes and procedures clearly and completely so everyone in the company knows what they are responsible for as part of your cybersecurity team. Good documentation of policies is also useful if you do suffer a breach and need to show a regulatory body that you fulfilled your compliance requirements.
5. Monitoring and Quick Response
You should now have your cybersecurity compliance controls in place and your employees have received cybersecurity training. Congratulations— don’t rest on your laurels. Cyber threats are constantly evolving, and regulations evolve right along with them. You need to monitor compliance regulations and your compliance programs to ensure that you are still up-to-date. Not only is this essential for meeting regulatory requirements, it’s good business as it provides you with a check regarding your cybersecurity posture.
Major Cybersecurity Regulations
As mentioned above, it’s important to know which regulations apply to your industry and to you as a business. There are three main cybersecurity regulations developed by the US Federal Government that mandate that healthcare organizations, financial institutions, and federal agencies and their contractors need to protect their systems and information from cyber attacks: he 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, and the 2002 Homeland Security Act, which included the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA).
Below are the eight most prominent regulations that may apply to cybersecurity compliance for small businesses.
PCI DSS
The PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) framework is mandatory for any business that collects, stores, handles, or transmits payment card information. It promotes a secure environment for credit card processing by providing regulatory standards that include technical and operational system components included in or connected to cardholder data. It’s required to achieve PCI compliance for small businesses if you are a merchant who accepts or processes payment cards.
HIPAA
HIPAA governs the use and protection of patient health information. It specifies who is allowed to have and view patient information, and it establishes rules for patient access to their information. Covered entities include health care providers and clearing houses, pharmacies, health plans, health billing services, etc.
SOC 2
The SOC 2 (System and Organization Control) version 2 establishes guidelines for managing customer data records. The audit rules are flexible with each organization designing rules that make sense for its operation. SOC 2 is more of a guideline or framework rather than a regulation, based on the Trust Services Criteria issued by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). The guidelines help the organization establish important cybersecurity controls.
GDPR
The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is a European Union (EU) regulation that governs how organizations can collect data or target individuals in EU countries. It requires businesses to deploy the technical controls necessary to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data. The GDPR applies to organizations that process the personal data of EU citizens or residents, or offer goods or services to them. The regulation applies whether or not the servicing organization is physically located in the EU or member states. GDPR compliance for small business is important if you’re processing any kind of data from people in the EU.
FERPA
FERPA is the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act, enacted to ensure that students’ educational records are protected. The Act applies to all educational institutions that receive federal funds from the US Department of Education and governs the access to educational information and records by public entities such as potential employers, publicly-funded educational institutions, and foreign governments.
NIST
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) cybersecurity guidelines and best practices focus on risk-based cybersecurity management. NIST is a non-regulatory US Department of Commerce agency. Its directives and standards are voluntary and can be tailored to suit an individual organization’s business needs and requirements. One important NIST standard in the cybersecurity area is the NIST 800-53 Risk Management Framework, a cybersecurity standard and compliance framework for information systems and organizations.
CCPA
The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA) gives consumers more control over the personal information that businesses collect about them. The regulation also provides guidance on how to implement the law. It specifies that businesses must deploy safeguards to protect customer personal information, and specifies how that information can be collected and used.
CMMC
The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) was developed by the US Department of Defense (DOD). It’s a compliance framework that establishes a unifying standard for implementing cybersecurity controls and safeguards across the entire DoD supply chain. The goal is to ensure the security of the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) by protecting sensitive information shared with contractors and subcontractors. It applies to any organization handling national security information.
Compliance Assessment Checklist
Having a cybersecurity compliance assessment checklist will help ensure that you’ve met all of your compliance requirements for a given regulation. It can also help demonstrate compliance to regulators. Different regulations may necessitate unique checklists, depending on their coverage and requirements. Whichever checklist(s) you use, adapt it to your needs, check regularly for updates, and make sure it covers everything you need. Finally, it’s a good idea to have your checklist reviewed by a legal or cybersecurity expert.
For example, A HIPAA cybersecurity compliance checklist might look something like this:
- Security risk assessment and management
- Privacy policies and procedures
- Security awareness training for employees
- Access control mechanisms
- Incident response and breach notification procedures
- Business associate agreements with third-party vendors
Make Cybersecurity Compliance a Priority
Your business may be small, but it is squarely in the sights of cyber criminals who are looking for an easy score. Don’t be one of their victims. Almost 60% of small businesses that suffer a cyber attack go out of business within six months. Regulatory compliance is not only a legal requirement but also a crucial aspect of business ethics and customer trust. Non-compliance can lead to severe consequences, including fines, legal liabilities, and reputational damage.
Making cybersecurity and cybersecurity compliance a business priority will help you be prepared to comply with applicable regulations and protect your company from a potentially disastrous cyber attack. SentinelOne can help you achieve and maintain cybersecurity compliance. For more information go to www.sentinelone.com/platform/small-business/.
