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The 411 on Compliance: Protecting Your Data Beyond Required Security Standards

Compliance

          “$4 million is the average total cost of data breach.”

          (Ponemon Institute, 2016 Cost of a Data Breach: Global Study)

In this day and age, complying with industry and government security standards will always play a crucial role when it comes to your business operations—no matter the industry or location of your business. Industry organizations and government agencies establish data security standards and regulations to safeguard networks, their data, and customer data. At the same time, many of these standards can help you determine a baseline of where your organization stands when it comes to data security within your own IT infrastructure.  

“Forty-eight percent of respondents stated the main cause of data breach was a malicious or criminal attack against the organization.” (Ponemon Institute, 2016 Cost of a Data Breach: Global Study)

 

Data is a hot commodity especially any that includes personally identifiable information (PII) or proprietary information. In 2016 alone, there were more than 2 billion records that were stolen. With the cyber threats on the rise, securing your data requires a proactive data security strategy and a robust data management solution that can proactively help your organization protect sensitive information and comply with complex regulations.

Where’s Your Data?

If your organization manages and moves sensitive, personal data anywhere around the world, within the United States and beyond, you may be required to meet and maintain compliance standards and regulations.

Within the U.S., some of the most common regulations are the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX), and IRS Publication 1075. Managing personal data throughout Europe will require compliance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and potentially EU-US Privacy Shield, among other things. In the UK, managing sensitive data requires compliance with the Data Protection Act (DPA), UK Code of Connection (CoCo), Public Services Network (PSN), and ISO 27001, just to name a few.

Each and every one of the compliance standards mentioned above have their own individual requirements, but you’ll find as the one critical common denominator—you must be able to account for your data.

The High Cost of Non-Compliance

“The average cost for organizations that experience non-compliance related problems is nearly $9.4 million.” (Ponemon Institute, True Cost of Compliance)

Many businesses have an online transaction or e-commerce component, and visitors to websites want assurance that their information, such as credit card numbers and personal data, is secure. Compliance with standards, certifications, and a history of data protection helps ease consumer concerns and encourages repeat business.

In the case of the PCI DSS, credit card companies can refuse to accept charges by companies who do not comply with the standard. Each payment company also has their own security standards. For example, American Express requires compensation of up to $100,000 for each data incident, plus credit card monitoring and replacement costs, and the card issuer’s fraud chargebacks. In the UK, before your organization can connect to the Public Services Network (PSN), you must be accredited and achieve PSN compliance; you will either be assessed as compliant or rejected and unable to connect, and you must resubmit your application every year.

Three Ways a Managed File Transfer (MFT) Technology Supports Compliance Efforts

With a proactive data management strategy and a managed file transfer (MFT) tool, you can simplify the process of facilitating compliance and meet rigorous data security standards.

With a MFT solution, facilitating compliance is simplified through the following capabilities:

  1. Advanced Data Transfer Workflow Automation

While your end users may have a general understanding about compliance regulations, that doesn’t mean that compliance is a priority when it comes to their day-to-day activities. Oftentimes, your end users may take short cuts that can compromise your compliance and security initiatives.

With a MFT solution, you can automate your critical workflows and processes and ensure that your compliance requirements are not compromised. Your end users can continue managing their work with ease, while all of your security and tracking processes continue automatically in the background.

  1. A Centralized Platform to Provide Control and Visibility Over Your Data

Not knowing what’s happening within your network can be dangerous. Some of the most pervasive compliance pitfalls stems from a shortage of administrator insight into a sprawling, changing IT infrastructure. Transparency into these environments is critical if IT teams want to ensure that everything checks out with regulatory expectations.

With a MFT solution, IT leaders can get the big picture and maintain an unprecedented level of transparency over their entire IT infrastructure and data activity. The top-down view of the infrastructure is a primary component of compliance excellence, while also alleviating a number of other security and performance risks at the same time.

  1. Customized Compliance Profiles and Reporting

While every organization has its own set of compliance standards to uphold, it’s extremely important to understand how data moves throughout your organization. A one-size-fits-all data management solution will likely not be of much help for a highly specialized compliance profile. The best data management technologies provide customized data automation workflows and configurations to ensure the highest possible degree of adherence.  

With a MFT solution, you can enhance your security posture, provide data management, customized reporting, and integration capabilities, while also producing measurable effects on ROI within your organization.

Meet Compliance Mandates with EFT by Globalscape

Maintaining compliance can help you avoid fines and loss of business, shore up your corporate security plan, protect your reputation as a company that cares about security, and improve your IT structure overall.

Enhanced File Transfer™ (EFT™)  can help you achieve or exceed security practices mandated by the most rigorous standards. . Globalscape’s best-in-class MFT offering, the EFT Platform, features robust data security capabilities that enable organizations of all sizes to meet and maintain compliance measures.

With EFT, you organization can:

  • Protect data in transit or in at rest on file transfer systems
  • Track or audit user activity and file movement
  • Meet requirements for data wiping and sanitization
  • Monitor and alert in real-time on potential violations of security standards
  • Capture compensating controls and generate reports on compliance status

Download your free trial of EFT today, if you’re ready to meet compliance regulations.

 

 

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