Compliance Multi-Tasking: Today's Security Priority

Driven by increasing regulatory scrutiny and the need to protect key corporate assets, concerns about compliance and data leakage have risen to the top of the priority list for today's corporate executives. Federal US legislation such as HIPAA and GLBA, as well as state laws such as California's SB-1386, clearly define acceptable practices with regards to digital information security. In addition, corporate governance rules have mandated strict policies to deal with authorized and unauthorized access, and the use of sensitive corporate information by employees, partners, and auditors.

Compliance isn't a project that takes a few employees a couple of months to complete. Compliance is a new corporate way of life requiring companies to maintain complete control over sensitive content throughout their organization and throughout its lifecycle. This involves instituting new policies, procedures and processes, including:

• Creating and maintaining policies that clearly define the company’s approach to user authentication, access, and rights
• Mapping policies to specific business processes and types of content
• Protecting networks and systems against inbound threats and attacks
• Monitoring and detecting violations to those policies
• Enforcing policies using automated tools
• Protecting sensitive content, including encryption of protected data
• Reporting and forensics in order to demonstrate compliance to third-party auditors and executives