As compliance costs skyrocket, standards grow increasingly complex, and the cyber threat environment evolves, organizations are turning to RegTech solutions to automate their compliance processes and improve their overall cybersecurity posture.

Compliance with regulatory and industry standards, such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, FedRAMP, and SSAE 16 SOC reporting, are a burdensome yet necessary part of doing business in the digital world. Organizations operating in highly regulated industries, such as healthcare and finance, face significant compliance challenges, especially when they must comply with multiple standards. HIPAA, for example, applies to any organization that handles medical records, including schools, collection agencies that handle medical debt, personal injury attorneys, and SaaS providers of healthcare software; meanwhile, these same organizations may also have to comply with PCI DSS, SSAE 16 reporting, SOX, and other applicable standards.

Organizations must figure out which standards apply to them, then continually keep up with reporting requirements, audits, and the inevitable changes in those standards as technology and the cyber threat environment evolve. It is estimated that regulatory compliance costs U.S. businesses about $2 trillion annually, and in a perverse twist, small businesses’ compliance costs are over three times higher than what large companies bear. This heavy burden helps explain why so many enterprise cybersecurity “plans” start and end with compliance, even though compliance does not equate to data security. It’s not necessarily that organizations don’t care about whether their data is secure, but that they spend so much money and time on compliance, there’s nothing left to tackle cybersecurity.

Fortunately, technology has made it possible for organizations to achieve compliance and secure their systems and data at an affordable cost.

RegTech to the Rescue

One of the biggest problems in many organizations is the fact that their compliance processes – or the processes of their third-party compliance providers – are not automated. Some companies still use spreadsheet programs such as Excel for compliance reporting and audits, even though Excel was never meant to be used with the very large data sets produced by today’s complex data environments. But RegTech software, such as Continuum GRC’s IT Audit Machine (ITAM), can.

While the term “RegTech” is most commonly associated with the finance industry, RegTech solutions can be employed by any organization that must adhere to compliance standards, including healthcare, cloud computing, SaaS, education, and public-sector organizations. RegTech solutions utilize big data capabilities and rapid report creation to automate data management and reporting. Instead of multiple, disparate spreadsheets and ledgers, RegTech software creates a centralized repository of all IT compliance requirements with associated controls and automated information flows for audits, assessments, and testing.

Making Sense of Big Data

The big problem with big data is that it amounts to a lot of big noise unless you have the capability to analyze it and derive actionable insight from it. RegTech doesn’t just simplify your compliance processes; it also strengthens your enterprise’s cybersecurity by providing the advanced data analysis capabilities you need to make sense of your data environment and discover where your vulnerabilities lie. The ITAM, for example, integrates IT governance, policy management, risk management, and incident management. In addition to taking the pain out of the compliance process, it empowers you to document and analyze IT risks, develop mitigation plans, define security controls, and manage ongoing risk assessments so that you can anticipate new and emerging threats and stop them before a breach occurs.

RegTech is poised to transform IT governance, compliance, and cybersecurity. Organizations that employ this new technology will free up money, time, and human resources to innovate, create, and pursue long-term organizational goals instead of being bogged down in regulatory paperwork and worried about data breaches and other cyber attacks.

The cybersecurity experts at Lazarus Alliance have deep knowledge of the cybersecurity field, are continually monitoring the latest information security threats, and are committed to protecting organizations of all sizes from security breaches. We offer full-service risk assessment services and Continuum GRC software to protect companies from data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber threats.

Lazarus Alliance is proactive cybersecurity®. Call 1-888-896-7580 to discuss your organization’s cybersecurity needs and find out how we can help your organization successfully simplify Governance, Risk, and Compliance, and secure your systems.

A recent report revealed that “More than 209,000 cybersecurity job postings in the U.S. are unfilled, and postings are up 74% over the past five years.”

Lazarus Alliance Cybervisors are the front line for the global business community, bridging this critical cybersecurity job talent shortage.

Steve Morgan, a professional acquaintance who writes about cybersecurity for Forbes published One Million Cyber security Job Openings In 2016 and revealed some jaw-dropping statistics concerning the growing deficit in hiring qualified cybersecurity employees. To make matters worse, this chasm is exacerbated by the explosion of corporate breaches impacting and even decimating businesses in financials, education, business, government, and especially healthcare.

A recent report revealed that “More than 209,000 cybersecurity jobs in the U.S. are unfilled, and postings are up 74% over the past five years, according to a Peninsula Press (a project of the Stanford University Journalism Program) 2015 analysis of numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.” It is pretty clear that while there currently is not enough talent to go around, this is only getting exponentially worse.

Another report included “A report from Cisco puts the global figure at one million cybersecurity job openings. The demand for the (cybersecurity) workforce is expected to rise to 6 million (globally) by 2019, with a projected shortfall of 1.5 million” stated Michael Brown, CEO at Symantec, the world’s largest security software vendor.” This only turns up the anxiety level in companies that are scrambling to avoid being the “breach du jour”.

Compounding matters are that there is a significant increase in regulatory and compliance requirements across all industries. Every compliance framework out there went through major overhauls in 2015. In some cases as is the case for the SSAE 16, doubled in complexity. The situation just got more expensive and complex.

The only clear answers for businesses that want to remain viable in the global cyber threatscape come in the form of increased efficiencies and leveraged resources. Two of the best solutions that have emerged to address these challenges are:

Retain a Cybervisor®:

Retaining the help from dedicated and verifiable cybersecurity experts costs less than the expense of hiring just one (1) cybersecurity employee. And yes, that was a plural, not a singular expert. With professional Cybervisor services, companies get the expertise of many seasoned experts who collaborate and stand together to support their clients.

Automation is Your Friend:

It’s time to work smarter and not harder! By utilizing automated cybersecurity and GRC tools, we have discovered that employees are so much more efficient and effective. In fact utilizing a tool like ITAM consistently makes the cybersecurity, GRC assessments and reporting processes a whopping 180% more efficient on average. When time is money, ITAM is like getting three (3) dedicated cybersecurity employees for less than the cost of one (1).

Learn more about Lazarus Alliance and why Lazarus Alliance is Proactive Cybersecurity™.

An actual cybersecurity breach would put Hard Rock Hotel and Casino at the front of the corporate wreckage A-List and be hard hitting on both the business and careers.

The past twelve (12) months have produced cybersecurity breaches at Sony, Target, Neiman Marcus, Michaels, Affinity Gaming, P.F. Chang’s, Albertson’s and SuperValu, Home Depot, JP Morgan Chase, Staples and the list goes on. News that the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino may be joining the roster was reported by CNBC on May 4th 2015.

For the first time in history CEOs are losing their jobs because of data breaches. Scrutiny of corporate leadership’s management of cybersecurity preparedness and incident response will undoubtedly continue to increase in the form of litigation and regulatory action after a major incident. The impact an actual cybersecurity breach would have on Hard Rock remains to be seen.

The escalating prevalence of widely publicized cybersecurity breaches has lit the fires for change in the attitudes of business leaders and consumers when it comes to cybersecurity. Gone are the days when board members and the C-suite ignore the drastic business impact a cybersecurity breach has on a company.

Within this firestorm, consumers are adding fuel by demanding more transparency, accountability and rapid remediation from businesses after a data breach occurs. The result is that cybersecurity is one of the highest priorities facing businesses and regulators. All of these high-profile security breaches were avoidable through the diligent application of proactive cybersecurity assessment, audits and strategy.

Michael Peters, CEO of Lazarus Alliance said “It is undeniable that prevention is the better alternative to incident response. A company can be either proactive or reactive to cybersecurity and only one approach will keep a company off the breach reports!”

Despite overwhelming evidence, businesses will increase focus more on cybersecurity breach controls against external hackers and cyber criminals this year, many more will miss the importance of protecting against insider and trusted partner threats. Employees and trusted Third-Parties negligence will continue to be the leading cause of cybersecurity breach incidents for the foreseeable future.

Between human error and trusted insiders with malicious intent, history has shown that the majority of cybersecurity breaches originate inside the company’s technological and physical walls. Employees and negligence are the leading cause of cybersecurity incidents but remain the least reported issue.

The Proactive Cybersecurity™ services at Lazarus Alliance is years ahead of this issue by offering IT Audit & Compliance, IT Risk Management and IT Governance & Policy solutions to companies that would rather proactively prevent data breaches than be in the news and in the next industry data breach report. These services include proactive SSAE 16 internal audit services.

Lazarus Alliance assessors have a deep wellspring of cybersecurity, regulatory and assessment experience to draw from. Continuing to shape the industry with breakthrough proprietary technology such as the IT Audit Machine (ITAM), the Policy Machine and Proactive Cybersecurity™ methodology all of which exceed baseline requirements providing superior results to our clients.

Learn more about Lazarus Alliance and why Lazarus Alliance is Proactive Cybersecurity™