Balancing security and compliance is crucial for businesses navigating today’s digital landscape. Passpack offers comprehensive security and compliance solutions that simplify regulatory adherence while safeguarding sensitive data through robust password management and advanced encryption.
This article looks at the complementary relationship between regulatory compliance and data security, and how Passpack facilitates compliance by providing the means to enforce rules around accessing confidential information. By combining security and compliance solutions, businesses can create a stronger framework for protecting sensitive data.
What is Compliance?
Compliance consists of a framework of laws, regulations, and procedural requirements that organizations must follow to operate a business legally and with transparency. Leveraging security and compliance solutions helps businesses maintain adherence to these frameworks while safeguarding critical information.
Some compliance measures are implemented by corporations voluntarily to standardize their business practices, escalation protocols, training policies, and employee codes of conduct. Most, however, are standards set by external regulatory bodies and government agencies with the power to audit organizations, levy fines, and issue penalties if the business is in violation.
There is at least a dozen different types of compliance standards that impact businesses depending upon the industry. Examples of well-known regulations include HIPAA for healthcare information privacy, OSHA for occupational safety and health guidelines in the workplace, and Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) which mandates the accuracy of financial reporting for public companies.
There are also enforceable compliance and ethical standards around legal procedures, data collection, electronic payment card processing, food safety, cloud security, environmental impact, employment discrimination, and other functions with which a business must comply to protect employee/customer data and insulate itself against liability.
The common denominator for compliance across all industries and standards is that it centers on the documentation and processes a business must follow to operate within the law. Compliance is reactionary. While not a static process, once the minimum baseline is achieved, it’s easy to keep pace with changes as the governing bodies publish and notify the public as to any updates in compliance laws.
What is Security
In this context, security means protecting the information and identities of people and businesses collected by entities that must keep data private for legal reasons.
Only here, you’re not dealing with ethical business partners like the FDA or the FTC who openly communicate a change in policy and never try to steal your data. Hackers are not going to provide advance notice of their intentions. There is no set-it-and-forget-it baseline cyber defense, as the threats are numerous and constantly evolving.
That makes security more of a proactive, 24×7 process for businesses holding confidential data. Not only are the threats changing, but so is the user population.
- Workers and vendors come and go – some may never get properly off-boarded, leaving credentials idle yet active.
- Teams create, update, and share identities and passwords for access to multiple digital services and network systems at their own discretion – who is tracking all that activity and providing minimum standards and rules for credential strength and sharing?
- Users open new accounts for access to online assets and forget to close them when the project is complete – leaving backdoors into network systems open and unattended.
- Employees use their personal devices for work purposes without the same security protocols provided by company-supplied devices – perhaps exposing confidential data and passwords by using unencrypted communications.
All these actions expand the attack surface for cybercriminals and make a business more vulnerable to exploitation. Step One: stealing user credentials. That’s why we say a password & credentials management application like Passpack should be your first line of defense.
Hackers will use phishing/spear-phishing emails, social engineering ploys, brute force attacks, email address spoofing, QR code phishing (quishing), and text messaging scams to trick employees and users into revealing or stealing their credentials. From there it’s just a few clicks to breach critical network systems to steal customer data or install ransomware.
The right security and compliance solutions provide the tools necessary to mitigate risks and protect confidential information.
Bottom line: you can’t have compliance without security. Compliance tells a business how to operate, it does not protect data the business collects. Without security, all you’ll have is confidential data stored in one place that can be easily stolen if poor password practices are in use.
Businesses must take a proactive approach to securing and monitoring their networks, devices, and applications for suspicious activity to reduce risk. This includes educating employees as to the latest scams, keeping malware threat detection software up to date, and of course, using a password manager.
Passpack Facilitates Compliance
The origin of most data breaches can be traced to a cybercriminal using stolen user credentials to access critical systems. Protect your passwords and you will significantly reduce your attack surface.
There is no 100% effective defense against a user falling victim to an elaborate scheme. However, Passpack can help meet regulatory compliance requirements and reduce the chances of a successful breach by enforcing strong security policies around password creation and sharing.
Passpack provides a random password generator that puts centralized administrators in charge of creating company-wide rules for character string length and strength, sharing among team members, expiration, and more. As part of its suite of security and compliance solutions, Passpack ensures businesses can maintain both data security and regulatory adherence.
Passpack is built on a Zero Knowledge Architecture with end-to-end encryption so that no one, not even Passpack employees, can access your data. Plus, Passpack adds an extra layer of defense through our Packing Key technology. This unique encryption key, known only to each account owner, helps make businesses more resilient against the first barrage of most cyberattacks: getting unsuspecting users to reveal their credentials through phishing or brute force attacks.
With Passpack, all user credentials are safely stored under the watchful eye of a centralized administrator(s) who has complete visibility into all password-related activity. Further, Passpack supports Multi-factor Authentication and YubiKey to verify user identities, and Single Sign-on (SSO) to allow employees to access relevant enterprise services including Passpack using one identity.
And as far as far as compliance goes, we only work with partners that have the necessary security certifications such as Service Organization Control 2 (SOC 2) SOC 2 is a framework for managing data privacy and security that applies to service providers storing customer data in the cloud, like Passpack. SOC 2 requires companies to establish and follow strict information security policies and procedures. Compliance is verified by external audits and is crucial for technology and cloud computing companies. Passpack has met these standards and is currently under audit.
Try Passpack for Free
With Passpack you can be sure that not only are your organization’s compliance initiatives secure, so is your password management application provider.
Try Passpack today risk-free. Sign up for a no-obligation 28-day free trial of the Passpack Business Plan and get peace of mind knowing your compliance efforts are backed by secure credential control.