In today’s rapidly evolving regulatory landscape, the costs associated with compliance are steadily climbing. Organizations across various sectors are finding themselves grappling with the financial burden of adhering to industry regulations and standards. However, the price of non-compliance is even steeper, creating a dual challenge for businesses to manage efficiently.
In industries that are heavily regulated, such as financial services, this issue is particularly pronounced. A study by Deloitte highlights that the operating costs linked to compliance in both retail and corporate banks have surged by 60% over the last ten years. This increase underscores the growing complexity and stringency of regulatory requirements that these institutions must meet to operate smoothly and avoid penalties.
Moreover, recent regulations introduced by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) concerning cybersecurity risk and incident disclosures have further emphasized the need for companies to be proactive in risk management and to have robust incident response frameworks in place. These regulations are designed to ensure that companies are not only prepared to prevent cybersecurity incidents but also capable of swiftly and effectively dealing with them should they occur.
On a broader scale, the Cato Institute has reported that the average firm in the United States allocates between 1.3% and 3.3% of its total wage bill to regulatory compliance. This statistic reflects the significant financial commitment required from businesses to meet regulatory demands, which encompasses everything from data protection to financial reporting standards.
Focusing specifically on data protection regulations, a report by The Ponemon Institute reveals that the average cost incurred by organizations facing non-compliance issues stands at a staggering $14.82 million. This figure represents a 45% increase from 2011, illustrating the escalating costs and risks associated with failing to adhere to data protection mandates.
In light of these challenges, this article will explore three critical areas that IT operations, security, and compliance teams must prioritize to not only mitigate risks but also avoid them when possible. By doing so, organizations can better manage their compliance costs and enhance their overall security posture.
## Shifting from Risk Mitigation to Risk Avoidance
Traditionally, many organizations have focused on risk mitigation—implementing strategies to reduce the likelihood and impact of compliance breaches and security incidents. However, a more effective approach may be to shift towards risk avoidance, which entails designing systems and processes that inherently prevent risks from arising in the first place.
According to insights from Gartner, this shift towards risk avoidance can be achieved through enhancing the developer experience. Security leaders are increasingly recognizing that instead of merely raising awareness, fostering a change in behavior is key to reducing cybersecurity risks. By 2027, it is anticipated that 50% of chief information security officers (CISOs) in large enterprises will have embraced human-centric security design practices. This approach focuses on aligning security strategies with human behaviors and psychological patterns observed in typical IT environments.
Human-centric security design involves understanding and addressing common human errors, such as poor password management or incorrect configuration settings. By eliminating these risky practices, organizations can proactively avoid potential security threats rather than just mitigating them.
## Best-Practice Capabilities for Risk Avoidance in Cloud Infrastructure
To effectively avoid risks, organizations should focus on developing secure and compliant workflows from the outset. By embedding security best practices and compliance requirements into developer workflows, security teams can ensure that developers adhere to protocols while maintaining autonomy. Standardized workflows not only enhance security but also accelerate the development process, allowing for faster time-to-market for new product features.
Platform and cybersecurity teams play a crucial role in enforcing standardized workflows and ensuring that developers have access to secure, company-approved resources. This involves creating “golden” images, modules, and workflows that serve as templates for secure infrastructure deployment.
Golden images and modules are pre-configured templates developed by platform, security, and compliance experts. These templates include up-to-date system packages, logging and monitoring tools, security patches, and configuration hardening measures. By using these standardized resources, developers can build applications safely and efficiently.
An essential component of risk avoidance is policy as code, which allows organizations to codify and enforce policies within their infrastructure. These policies automatically detect and address compliance violations during deployment, adding an extra layer of security to the development process.
Once these policies and golden templates are established, platform teams can build a management layer that simplifies deployment for developers, eliminating the need for them to navigate complex configuration or policy systems. This approach, known as an internal developer platform (IDP), streamlines deployment and reduces the risk of security breaches.
## Lifecycle Management
As organizations adopt centralized IDPs, they must also implement effective lifecycle management practices for the golden components used by development teams. This involves establishing efficient processes for the creation, testing, deployment, updating, and removal of standardized modules, policies, and images.
Centralized UIs and dashboards provide visibility and control over these components, allowing teams to quickly identify and address security risks. Developers can easily access the latest versions of images and modules, while security teams can deprecate outdated or vulnerable components to prevent potential threats.
By maintaining full lifecycle management controls and visibility, organizations can swiftly detect and mitigate security risks while keeping compliance costs in check.
## Integrated Secrets Management
A critical aspect of maintaining compliance and security in cloud environments is effective secrets management. Stolen credentials are one of the most common methods used by threat actors to breach organizations, as highlighted by the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR).
Integrated secrets management capabilities provide identity-based security, automatically authenticating and authorizing access to sensitive data. This approach allows IT organizations to conduct comprehensive scans of cloud resources and developer repositories to identify and remediate exposed or unmanaged secrets.
By employing automatic secrets rotation or dynamic secrets, organizations can eliminate the risks associated with manual secrets management and reduce the potential for secret sprawl. This approach ensures that credentials remain secure and minimizes the likelihood of unauthorized access.
For additional insights on effective secrets management, organizations can refer to best practices outlined by industry experts.
## The Benefits of Risk Avoidance
Enterprise cloud environments are inherently dynamic and complex, presenting numerous technological and business risks. By implementing best practices for compliance and cybersecurity from the outset and throughout the infrastructure lifecycle, organizations can create secure application development environments by default.
With compliance and cybersecurity guardrails in place, developers can focus on delivering innovative applications to market quickly and efficiently. This proactive approach to risk avoidance not only enhances security but also drives business growth and success.
To learn more about how best practices in security and infrastructure lifecycle management can help organizations avoid compliance and cybersecurity risks, interested parties can explore educational resources and webinars offered by industry leaders.
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