Compliance is a hot issue in IT, and for good reason. Failure to meet the rules and guidelines of the compliance police could mean fines, steep penalties and most important is a loss of trust with your clients/customers.
PCI Compliance – Protect your card
Compliance is needed in many areas of business large and small. Here are the biggest concerns:
1. PCI which stands for Payment Card Industry is the subject of many articles in today’s society. We see retailers scrambling to ensure that customers data is safe. To protect sensitive customer data a firewall should be used to segment cardholder information from the rest of your corporate network. PCI compliance provides that added layer of best practices for securing customer data.
2. Employees are by far the most important piece of any company’s compliance. If employees are educated properly against common techniques used by hackers then sensitive data has a better chance of being kept safe. Ensure all employees receive a healthy dose of compliance training and policy updates.
3. HIPAA and HITECH.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the Health Information Technology for Economic and clinical health Act require all data to be digitized and meet specific security and privacy standards. As this area of health care becomes more complex, compliance will play a big part in how patient data is captured and how data management is performed within every health care company.
4. Laptops and Mobile Devices are being used by most every business these days. Compliance is essential to protect the company from cyber infiltration.
5. Third-Party Apps are probably the biggest compliance related issue facing businesses today. Often referred to as Shadow IT these providers of email, compliance, storage and archiving services can give IT departments a big migraine if not managed correctly.
6. Cloud Service Providers are now a mainstream option and yet there is still many compliance issues to deal with. Customer data must be properly protected and in compliance with all relevant regulations.
At PNMC we can discuss the challenges you face in every facet of your compliance model. For a consultation please call at your convenience.