As organisations continue their digital transformation, network and security compliance is becoming more difficult.

Organisations not only have to comply with their own internal policies but are also obliged to comply with applicable industry and country regulations.

To make matters worse, regulations are changing in response to our increasingly digital lives. Staying on top of these changes is an uphill battle, particularly with limited compliance budgets and legacy processes most organisations face.

While it is no easy task to stay compliant, non-compliance can be costly. Research shows that 40% of consumers will take their business elsewhere if they find out a company is not taking steps to protect customer data.

Additionally, the average cost of non-compliance¹ for an organisation is nearly US$15-million due to business disruption, revenue and productivity losses, and any fines, penalties or settlement costs incurred. Being compliant may seem more costly upfront, but considering that it’s almost one-third the cost of non-compliance, it may be worth the spend. But where do you start?

The compliance challenges

While the numbers may be in your favour, choosing to be compliant is just one small part of the battle for many organisations. There are many roadblocks that organisations must work through to meet compliance. Some of the biggest challenges hear from enterprises are:

Organisational:

Lack of supporting resources, often due to limited or shrinking compliance budgets;
Increased internal reporting requirements (ie to executives or the board);
Updated corporate best practices for data governance and cyber hygiene;
Disparate corporate processes due to mergers and acquisitions.

Technological:

Changing corporate network configurations; and
Overwhelmed with legacy processes and tools.

External factors:

Continuous regulatory changes; and
New partners, vendors, or suppliers.

Finding compliance success

To be compliant, you need to understand your compliance status; to understand your compliance status, you need complete visibility into your digital environments. Seeing all your network devices – whether from enterprise, cloud or OT environments – is a vital part of staying on top of your compliance requirements.

But compiling all this information and monitoring it continuously is no easy task. Investing in a network security policy management (NSPM) tool can help. An NSPM solution will gather information about your networks alongside security requirements and evaluate it against your applicable compliance frameworks. By continually assessing configurations for vulnerabilities and policy violations, you can quickly catch and remediate any non-compliant devices.

A good NSPM tool will not only help monitor compliance status but also manage policy violations and exceptions and provide automation for vulnerability remediation. Having this tool helps improve business continuity and allows you to provide executive visibility into compliance posture. It also helps free up time for your team to focus on strategic initiatives or other priorities and, most importantly, helps avoid the costs of a failed audit or, worse, a data breach.

How Skybox can help

With the Skybox NSPM solution, you can achieve a holistic view of your attack surface to stay better protected. Our solution comes with out-of-the-box assessments for PCI-DSS, NERC, NIST, STIG and more, so you’re quickly up and running, no matter what regulations you must comply with. You can also easily configure custom policy templates for your own unique needs.

With a full network topology map, you can view and analyse rules and access paths across your hybrid network to ensure your stay in compliance. When changes or updates are needed in your environment, our solution will validate that new vulnerabilities and risks will not be introduced to firewalls or the network. We also provide a unified view of internal and external policies, continuously validating device configurations from a central location so you don’t have to navigate through different platforms to find the information you need.

Our firewall change management solution helps streamline processes through daily tracking via automated workflows and automated rule recertification. Our automated change management workflows simplify and validate changes while also offering the ability to automate and schedule audits and compliance reporting.

While compliance continues to be a necessary function for many organisations, the challenges that come with it do not. Adding an NSPM tool can not only help you maintain continuous compliance but also ensure you are prepared to pass your next audit.

Learn how Skybox can help you maintain continuous compliance. Speak with an expert.

¹The true cost of compliance with data protection regulations, Globalscape and Ponemon Institute, December 2017

About Skybox Security
Over 500 of the largest and most security-conscious enterprises in the world rely on Skybox for the insights and assurance required to stay ahead of dynamically changing attack surfaces. Our SaaS-based Exposure Management Platform delivers complete visibility, analytics and automation to quickly map, prioritise and remediate vulnerabilities across your organisation.