What Does an Audit and Compliance Specialist Do in Cybersecurity?

Compliance is complex. There’s no way around it. Businesses that work in industries like healthcare, education, retail, or that work with the Department of Defense are being asked to meet certain compliance regulations that are always changing and adapting to the times.

In this blog, DOT Security’s Compliance Managers, AJ Tamulaitis and Carolyn Schmidt, help explain their roles within DOT Security and how they help businesses and people better understand and become compliant with regulations like CMMC and HIPAA, and why cybersecurity is a critical part of achieving compliance with them.

“You can have cybersecurity without compliance, but you can’t have compliance without cybersecurity. You must have cybersecurity if you’re going to be compliant with any of the frameworks out there. Many businesses don’t realize the depth of compliance requirements and don’t understand the need for cybersecurity. They think ‘we’ve got antivirus, that’s enough.’ But that’s just not enough,” said AJ.

Whether it’s helping clients get a better understanding of what they need to become compliant or helping internal security experts grasp the complexities of compliance controls, a compliance manager’s job at DOT Security is to educate and be a resource for many people to learn more about compliance, how it works, why it’s important, how it can be accomplished, and how it’s changing.

How Compliance Managers Help Businesses

Compliance is a tricky beast for businesses due to the amount and complexity of the required controls no matter which form of compliance they need. There are dozens if not hundreds of intricacies involved that can easily be overlooked, forgotten, or misinterpreted by someone without sufficient experience in the fields of IT, cybersecurity, or compliance itself.

Compliance managers at managed security service providers (MSSPs) like DOT Security act as resident experts that can be leaned upon in a variety of situations for compliance knowledge. Are you updating your systems? A compliance manager can help you be proactive by consulting on what you can do now to maintain compliance later and save money on having to perform additional changes or updates later down the line. Are you expanding into a new territory or country? A compliance expert can help you sort out new regulations that might be encountered to eliminate the risk of non-compliance.

“Over a long period of time, their businesses are constantly evolving,” Carolyn said. “They’re constantly changing and we’re their partner in that to make sure they stay compliant as they grow.”

No matter if a business is becoming compliant for the first time or needing to ensure they maintain compliance over time and through updates and growth, a compliance manager’s job is to be there to help them be proactive as a consultant.

Performing a Gap Analysis

How does a business know where it stands when it comes to compliance? How can you be sure that you have what you need to meet the standards and achieve compliance without the anxiety that comes from the chance of non-compliance?

Many businesses may choose to take a quicker, easier route toward compliance, known as becoming paper compliant—when a business has basic protocols and procedures written down but doesn’t follow them. But this does not equal compliance, let alone good cybersecurity posture. This only comes from putting the written policies and procedures into practice throughout your organization.

This is where a gap analysis comes into play. In a gap analysis, compliance and cybersecurity experts comb through your business to review policies and procedures to ensure they account for the necessary controls required by the desired compliance regulation. This involves not only going over the written documentation but also performing interviews and viewing demonstrations to provide proof that the written policies are being put into action by the entire organization.

One exciting but little-known aspect of this is testing the physical security of information, such as at a hospital or medical practice. One of the controls for HIPAA involves limiting physical access to electronic personal health information (ePHI). This means limited entry using keycards, pin codes, and other forms of access control, as well as other forms of physical access security. Part of a gap analysis for businesses that are required to abide by these rules is testing the strength of them, and the only way to do that is to see how far someone can actually get before being stopped. So, a compliance manager must attempt to infiltrate a business to see how far they can get before being stopped and if they can get access to ePHI to test that business’ security.

“The goal of this is to test for vulnerabilities and help lead us to the cause of it if one exists,” explained Carolyn. “Is it a policy issue or a training issue? Do we need to completely re-write a business’ policies and procedures because they don’t work or does your staff need to be trained more on how to deal with these situations?”

From simple due diligence to physically testing security protocols, compliance managers go to great lengths to help businesses meet and maintain compliance when they need it.

Compliance as a Service

We’ve established already that compliance can be difficult to keep on top of, but one of the main reasons for this is that the regulations and the businesses that meet them are both always changing. This creates a need for long-term cybersecurity compliance services to ensure that business growth doesn’t put compliance in jeopardy.

To handle this, DOT Security and its compliance experts offer a solution known as Compliance-as-a-Service to give businesses long-term compliance help to stay compliant through growth, expansion, updates, and more.

A Day in the Life of an Audit and Compliance Specialist

On a day-to-day basis, compliance manager’s schedules are jam-packed with trainings on the latest controls and updates (webinars, blogs, news articles, etc.), retaining required certifications, writing processes, and protocols (including templates used by businesses to help establish their own compliance documentation), taking meetings with clients and other DOT teams, and doing everything else that it takes to remain an expert on an ever-changing topic.

“I like that every day is different,” says AJ. “Different clients, different frameworks, tackling unique problems. Every day is a different chance to help clients be compliant.”

“I love working with clients and helping them achieve compliance and taking burdens away from them,” Carolyn said, noting her favorite part of being a compliance manager. “You need to be willing to learn in this job because it’s always changing, and I enjoy keeping up with it all.”

In Conclusion

Whether it’s writing compliance documentation, gathering proof of compliance via interviews or demonstrations, or physically infiltrating businesses Mission Impossible style, compliance managers will go to extreme lengths to ensure their clients remain in compliance with their necessary regulations.

And, when things get complicated, as they often do with compliance, it’s always an advantage to have experts on your side whose job it is to stay up to date on everything compliance, so you don’t have to.

Learn more about DOT Security’s Compliance Services or explore the benefits and processes that come along with an expert-led gap analysis.