What is compliance automation?

Compliance automation helps organizations streamline workflows such as risk assessment, audit review, and testing. Automated tools do this by taking into account the company’s security and compliance policies. Afterward, regulations related to an organization’s industry, configuration, account, inventory, and security procedures are replicated into compliance automation software to identify violations.

What is compliance automation
Compliance automation, also known as automated compliance, is the use of technology, such as artificial intelligence (AI) capable applications, to implement and simplify compliance processes.

How does Automated compliance work?

Automated compliance work by categorizing and providing protection for specific types of data and systems. The classification is governed by applicable regulations. For example, specific types of patient data must be protected under GDPR regulations.

Compliance automation also involves the collection, monitoring, and analysis of data at various stages, followed by generating any necessary alerts when the analysis shows a potential compliance violation. For example, data sorted in a spreadsheet can be compared with historical averages. Once the automation software recognizes a relative increase or decrease in quantity, a report can be generated and sent to the appropriate stakeholders.

Types of Comliance that can be automated
Compliance can be classified into two categories: regulatory compliance and corporate compliance.

Regulatory compliance

Companies that use user data have taken a lot of time to implement compliance automation. Laws on the collection and use of personal data are often updated (e.g., GRDP and associated privacy rules), and automating compliance processes provide auditors with accurate information.

The COVID-19 pandemic has also made it harder for employees to understand every compliance detail, greatly increasing the need for automation tools.

Corporate compliance

Compliance with internal policies and procedures while maintaining the integrity of federal regulations is corporate compliance. For example, if a company has a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy, regular scans can be performed for potential vulnerabilities to ensure data privacy and security.

Automated Compliance examples
There are a couple of processes you can choose to automate. Here are some examples of areas where you can improve with compliance automation.

Risk management

Risk management helps organizations identify potential vulnerabilities and take steps to mitigate the impact. Automated compliance tools help organizations proactively identify gaps in their IT security policies, infrastructures, and provide them with tactical actions to address them.

Regulatory and corporate compliance:

Automation tools help organizations by staying proactive about regulatory changes. Automation supports policy management, document management, employee training, monitoring, and timely compliance.

Security controls:

Security and compliance are closely linked. Automation helps ensure information security through data discovery, entity-level risk mapping, error detection, and risk mitigation and enables scaling across multiple compliance criteria.

Audit trail management:

Compliance automation works as a centralized solution helps organisations by automating inspection requirements such as document tracking, evidence collection, reporting, and more. It can help you maintain records of previous audits and verify the accuracy of compliance related activities.

Benefits of compliance automation

Through compliance automation, organizations can stay compliant and avoid potential fines and other financial consequences. The less a company’s compliance team relies on manual processes, the more efficient the team can handle complex compliance tasks. The benefits are:

• More cost-effective than manual workflows.
• Availability of compliance status and risk attitudes from a central dashboard.
• Leverage real-time data to improve risk management decisions.
• Continuously monitor compliance requirements, manage third-party risks, and identify potential vulnerabilities.
• Reduced risk of security breaches.
• Fewer reported errors.
• Improved accuracy and compliance reporting.