For all businesses that interact with customer information and payment, it’s a harsh reality. Rules keep growing. Fines are also on the rise.Fines continue to rise as well. One lost control can cost a company thousands of dollars, or the customer’s trust. That’s why there is more and more reliance on compliance software rather than doing it manually.
Manual compliance processes are time consuming and fraught with risk. Spreadsheets get outdated. Evidence gets lost. Deadlines get missed. It’s improbable one employee will keep up with all the rules in all frameworks. Compliance automation comes in handy there. Monitors systems, gathers evidence, and identifies issues that could lead to violations. It saves time. It also saves money as audits are quicker when evidence is brought together.
This guide covers five areas that most growing businesses need to know about: payment security software for PCI DSS compliance, platform for GRC software for comprehensive risk management, compliance automation software as an overarching solution,
SOC 2 Type II software for vendors with healthcare customers who manage patient data, and GDPR software for businesses that serve customers in Europe. The requirement is described in each section, in terms of what it means, why it is important and what good software should do about it. No jargon. Simple facts to be used to make an actual decision.
PCI DSS Compliance Software
If you accept credit card payments, then
PCI DSS applies to you as well. It’s a data security standard by the payment card industry. It’s a set of instructions meant to ensure the security of cardholders’ information.
Stricter than previous versions. Requests live script monitoring at the payment page. It also requests for quick alerts on any unauthorized alterations. This is because hackers know how to take advantage of checkout pages that have hidden scripts. As long as thousands of card numbers can be stolen by one overlooked script, one might think.Well, one might think that thousands of card numbers can be stolen by one overlooked script when not detected early.
This is where a PCI DSS compliance software could come in handy. It is used to keep an eye on your cardholder data environment (CDE) all day long. It scans for risks. It meets all the 12 core requirements of the standard and each requirement set has a corresponding control. It also can help you get ready for the paperwork you will need for a Self-Assessment Questionnaire or a full report on Compliance, depending on the extent of your transactions.
A good PCI software, however, will do more than filling out forms. Identifies real security flaws. It specifies poor access controls. Some even have one-click evidence collection, so that evidence can be collected directly from your existing systems instead of your team searching them for evidence.
It is essential to have the right tool. Keep an eye out for software that will meet PCI DSS 4.0.1 requirements without modifications. Establish if it offers periodic (not annual) monitoring. Would you like it to automatically generate audit-prepared reports when they are needed? Also, for those teams that will be using a Qualified Security Assessor, make sure that the software will be able to give the evidence directly to the QSA. This will save you weeks of wrangling with your audit.
Not complying with PCI is no trivial matter. Businesses that fail to comply will have to pay a fine every month. They might even not be able to take credit card payments. There are ways to make this burdensome task manageable and an ongoing process instead of a stressful yearly scramble, and they are implemented through good software.
PCI DSS Compliance Software
PCI DSS is applicable to any business that deals with credit card transactions. It is the acronym of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. A set of rules that is designed for cardholder data protection.
The newest version is PCI DSS 4.0.1. More stiff than the old versions. It asks for LIVE script monitoring at payment pages. It also requests the quick identification of any unauthorized changes. For this reason these rules were put in place as hackers like to exploit checkout pages with hidden scripts. Thousands of card numbers can be stolen in one go without anyone realising.
This is when PCI DSS compliance software can come in handy. It provides 24×7 monitoring of your cardholder data environment or CDE. It scans for risks. It checks all controls that are related to the 12 core requirements of the standard. It also helps with creating the documentation needed for a Self-Assessment Questionnaire or Report on Compliance depending on the size of your transactions.
A good PCI software is more than a form-filler. Identifies real security vulnerabilities. Alerts on weak access controls.
It’s essential to have the right tool. Get software that is PCI DSS 4.0.1 compliant “out of the box”. Find out if it offers constant monitoring – annual scan is not sufficient. Inquire whether it can produce reports that are ready to be audited at a moment’s notice. Also, if you’re going to be collaborating with a Qualified Security Assessor, be sure this software can pass the evidence to them. This makes weeks of back and forth in the process of your audit a thing of the past.
It’s a risk to not comply with PCI. The fines for businesses that are not compliant will be monthly. They may even be forced to cease to accept card payments completely. The role of good software is not to make this big, once-a-year effort, but to make it a daily occurrence.
These are the SOC 2 Type II Requirements for Healthcare.
SOC 2 is a service organization certification project created by the AICPA, a group of Certified Public Accountants in the United States. It assesses the security of a business’s valuable information. There are five parts to it, called Trust Services Criteria. Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality and Privacy are these. All reports must have security. The remaining four are based on business activity.
The two types of
SOC 2 reports and the difference doesn’t matter. A Type I report will determine whether your controls are designed properly, but just one day. A Type II report takes it to the next level. It verifies whether or not those same controls actually functioned; day after day, for three to twelve months. That is why SOC 2 Type II is given greater weight. It will show that your security is not just on paper. It demonstrates its durability in actual use on a daily basis.
This report has now become a staple, not an option, for healthcare companies. A hospital or health system is likely to ask for a vendor’s most recent SOC 2 Type II report before they enter into a contract with any vendor that handles protected health information, or PHI. This encompasses EHR systems, telehealth applications, and any software that comes into contact with patient information.
Whereas, SOC 2 is optional, while HIPAA is mandatory. Fortunately, the two go hand in hand. The Security and Confidentiality criteria of SOC 2 are very similar to those of the Security Rule in HIPAA. They handle the fundamentals the same way: effective access controls, protection of sensitive information by encryption, continuous system surveillance, and a well-defined incident response strategy on the occurrence of a problem. If a company is already HIPAA compliant, it will likely have a shorter road to SOC 2 Type II, as a lot of the work is already done.
Preparing for this audit doesn’t need to be overwhelming! Begin with a gap assessment to determine where controls are at. Seal holes you discover. After a couple of months, the controls should be run for a few months, and then it’s time for your CPA firm to test. Compliance software is widely adopted at this point by many healthcare vendors. It automatically keeps track of evidence, can monitor control failure in real time, and maintains training logs and access history. This makes an audit season a regular routine rather than a last minute scramble.
GDPR Compliance Software
GDPR is General Data Protection Regulation. It is a EU privacy law. However, this is a part of most businesses’ lives that they fail to consider, regardless of where your company is located. GDPR applies to you if you process personal data relating to any individual in the EU. The consequences are severe as well. The fines can be of up to 20 million euros, or 4% of your company’s global annual turnover, whichever is more.
GDPR empowers the people to have real control over their own data. They may request to view your information on them. They may request that you remove it. They may request that you give it to them in a portable format. These requests have to be dealt with within a specified period and unless these are done manually in a number of such requests, it gets quickly messy.
That’s where GDPR compliance software comes in handy. It automates data subject access requests (DSARs), which is another term for requests for personal data.Routine requests for access to personal data – also known as data subject access requests – go quicker, with it taking minutes, rather than days. It establishes and maintains a Record of Processing Activities (RoPA) which registers what personal data you are collecting and for what purpose. It also enables the implementation of Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) before any activity with higher risk data processing is carried out.
GDPR also has much to do with security. The regulation mandates reasonable technical safeguards, such as encryption, robust access controls, and periodic security assessments, among other measures. Instead of having a privacy policy that no one reads, or you have a separate document to compare against your live systems, a good GDPR software integrates these technical requirements with real evidence.
Understanding the distinction between a consent management platform and comprehensive GDPR software is beneficial. A consent management platform primarily manages cookie banners and records a visitor’s consent status.
It also helps in SEO by supporting compliance with privacy best practices, improving user trust, and reducing issues related to search engine crawling caused by improperly implemented consent banners. Full GDPR software addresses much more, including RoPA, DSARs, DPIAs, vendor contracts, and real-time monitoring. It’s not uncommon for many businesses to employ both, as website consent is just a small part of the broader privacy landscape. GDPR software solutions are now beginning to address more modern challenges, such as handling deletion requests when data has previously been used to train machine learning models.
Choosing the Right Platform
No one tool is a winner for all situations. You should choose the right software according to your industry, data volume, and the number of frameworks you need to be at. A small SaaS firm only interested in SOC 2 is seeking a different kind of compliance than a hospital vendor would ever need to obtain in any type of compliance arrangement, including one involving SOC 2, HIPAA and GDPR.
List all the frameworks that apply to your business. After that, search for software that supports them all rather than just one. A strong multi-framework mapping tool allows a single piece of evidence to satisfy multiple standards, cutting down the time needed to prepare for separate audits. Likewise, selecting platforms with strong reporting and documentation capabilities
helps off-page SEO by making it easier to produce trustworthy compliance resources that can earn mentions and backlinks from industry websites.
Avoid making the selection based on price alone. Inquire about the software’s continuous monitoring capability. Question the rate at which it indicates a broken control. Inquire whether it can actually integrate with the tools that you and your team use on a daily basis. A platform that integrates seamlessly with your current processes will be used. No matter how many features it promises, one that introduces additional steps will be ignored.
Compliance is not a project that you can complete once and forget about! It is something that is constant in a modern business. The right software isn’t just good for passing an audit once. It helps to maintain your controls strong each day after the auditor departs.
Conclusion
The rules governing data and payments are increasingly becoming more strict. The last minute approach when you are about to be audited is quite risky for the business. Those that continue to excel are those that make compliance a daily practice and not an annual problem.
Good judgment is no substitute for software, but the software can eliminate the busy work. It monitors your systems while your team works on real work. It stores the evidence and an audit is no longer a stressful climb. For payments, SOC 2 Type II for healthcare trust, GDPR for privacy or a comprehensive GRC platform to handle it all, the end purpose is always the same. Establish solid controls, run them and let the software do the work.
Got to start small if necessary. Choose the framework that is most relevant to your company at this time. Get that one right. Then add outward from that. Compliance this way becomes effortless and much more useful for your business.
