If you’re doing business in the cloud, odds are you know a thing or two about compliance maintenance. This article highlights The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) and explains how this certification stands out from the rest by not being another just another check here for compliance standard. So, what is FedRAMP?

Throughout my career, I have worked with hundreds of organizations. Regardless of the vertical or size of the organization, I have found that many executives and security professionals feel like the interviewer in the Rickie Fowler commercial when it comes to their organization’s digital security. They don’t know where to start, for instance, nor are they aware of where and how today’s ever-evolving risks and threats affect the respective organization.

The time-consuming, administratively burdensome compliance process is riddled with potential human errors that can lead to violations. As securing data increasingly relies on proving controls’ effectiveness, the compliance becomes more stressful for everyone in the organization. However, building compliance workflow can streamline the process leading to a more cost effect and auditable outcome.

Being a compliance manager can sound tedious to a lot of people. When people think about compliance, they often think in terms of checking boxes on audit forms. However, compliance management is more like putting together a puzzle without having the cover picture. Compliance issues come from a variety of regulations and industry standards, often overlapping while sometimes being disconnected.

As data breach threats increase, governments and industry standards organizations seek to force organizations into maintaining better data security controls. Thus, creating an effective compliance program has become a business operations imperative rather than a series of “best practices.”

Highly regulated financial institutions often struggle with compliance management. As a financial institution matures its cybersecurity compliance program, the document management requirements often mean they need to find automated solutions that can create a single source of truth to ease audit stress.

Effective information security management requires understanding the primary concepts and principles including protection mechanisms, change control/management, and data classification. However, those terms may feel overwhelming at first leading many businesses to follow compliance requirements blindly without fully understanding whether they effectively secure their systems, networks, and software.