The digital age, where data has become an integral part of business operations, organization processes, service provision and personal life, has led to the birth of compliance.
Compliance regulations (or industry regulations) advise, or in most cases require, data owners and data handlers to observe a certain set of protocols. These protocols make sure that data is available, secure, and only accessible to the right people.
But how does one go about building a compliant IT framework? On that note, what really is compliance? These are the questions we’ll be tackling in this article as we navigate through the complex pathways of compliance regulations.
What is Compliance?
For the sake of context, let’s elaborate on what we mean by compliance . There are different types of compliance, for this article, we’re only referring to compliance regulations applicable to data owners, data handlers and processors.
As mentioned earlier, compliance regulations are a set of protocols pertaining to data storage, management, and security. These protocols often require businesses to backup data so that it’s recoverable and data loss is less likely.
Similarly, some compliance require data owners to create and store multiple copies of data; thereby ensuring that data is available even if one source is compromised in the event of hardware failure, power failure, etc.
While others, especially the ones related to government departments and contractors providing services to local government bodies dictate a rather strict set of protocols that have to be observed when processing data.
For instance, Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) advises several protocols for law enforcement agencies about the video surveillance footage recorded through dashboard cameras, surveillance cameras, and Body Worn Cameras (BWCs).
Other examples of compliance regulations include FedRAMP, HIPAA/HITRUST, FISMA, GDPR, etc.
How to Comply with an Industry Regulation?
If you’re wondering, how compliance works and how can business or organization comply to one, allow us to shed some brief light on the subject.
Please note: it goes without saying that processes vary depending on the compliance regulation in question. This is simply an overview of how compliance regulations usually work. For more details, it is advised to get in touch with consultants familiar with compliance regulations or service providers with industry compliant solution offerings.
Does it apply to you though?
Before wondering about compliance, as a business owner or as an organization, you need to make sure whether or not a compliance regulation applies to you. How to do that?
You need to analyze the data you’re storing, processing or handling. For instance, if you’re a healthcare service provider, then you’re probably processing, storing and retaining Personally Identifiable Information (PII).
This is information that in the wrong hands can cause damage to the data owner, your organization, and lead to several law suits as well. To save your organization and your clients from this situation, HIPAA and HITRUST have some guidelines for you to follow. Therefore, it will help your organization to work with other companies in your industry, if you were HIPAA and HITRUST compliance.
Similarly, other examples include finance industry, law industry, government bodies, and other similar industries or departments.
If it does, what do you need to do?
So, you’ve determined that your organization or business needs to comply with a certain industry regulation; let’s say FedRAMP for example. You’ll find several data storage vendors and backup vendors in the market who will offer FedRAMP compliant solutions to you. And the same is true for other compliance regulations too.
To learn more about the importance of FedRAMP, read this blog: Why FedRAMP is important?
But acquiring and setting up a compliant solution is not the same as being compliant. You will still need to be audited by the governing body in question. In other words, you’ll have the right tools but they will still make sure that you’re using them the right way.
In other words, here’s what you need to do:
· Analyze your data “ you need to know what’s going the data lifecycle is for your IT infrastructure. Where does it come from? Where does it go? How long is it stored? Who can access it? Who can change it? You need to have answers to these questions.
· Find the right solution “ do you need storage? do you need backup? Do you need both? What really is the necessity of your IT infrastructure? You’ll have a better idea once you analyze your data. Once you get an idea of what your IT environment needs, then on to the next step.
· Finding the right vendor “ finding the right vendor is the same as finding the right life partner. If you rush into it, that’ll be bad but if you take too long, that won’t be good either. If you have a better understanding of what you need, the search for finding the right vendor usually becomes easier.
· Set it up “ if you’ve found the right vendor, this is going to be a cinch. They’ll guide you through the whole process and it’ll be less painful.
· Define your lifecycle “ everyone in the IT staff needs to learn the lifecycle. Where does data come from and where does it go? How long is it retained? Who accesses it? You learned this earlier, now everyone needs to know. It needs to be common knowledge and the process has to be predictable for your team.
· Get Audited “ Finally, once the knowledge sharing is concluded, everybody’s trained and know what to do it’s time to call in the governing body and get the compliance you need. If you’ve followed the path, that shouldn’t be much of a problem.
What kind of technology, features & data services can help with
compliance?
Besides the process, the technology that’s used to store or backup data is also important in building a compliant IT framework.
The best fit depends on what exactly your business model, data lifecycle, data type and several other factors. So, the chosen solution can be a NAS appliance, SAN storage appliance, a unified NAS + SAN appliance or a Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) appliance with support for storage and backup and DR.
Therefore, a number of vendors can help with compliance concerns. What matters is that you choose the vendor with the expertise and the tools to deliver for your requirements while facilitate compliance concerns.
What kind of features & data services can help with compliance?
The right technology depends on what you need, the volume of data, and the type of data but there are some features that you should keep an eye out for that can help with building a compliant IT framework.
Here’s a brief list of said software features:
WORM (Write-Once Read-Many) Storage
WORM storage repositories help with compliance because they can only be written once. This implies that once data is written in these repositories, it cannot be edited and without the right protocols, it won’t be deleted either.
This makes them trustworthy, reliable and a really good option for storing sensitive or critical information thereby facilitating compliance requirements.
Immutable Snapshots
Snapshots provide a way of recovery. Immutable snapshots add another layer of reliability to the technology.
Similar to the WORM storage repositories, these snapshots cannot be edited. This means that cyber-threats like ransomware, malware, viruses cannot affect these snapshots. Hence you can recover from ransomware attacks almost seamlessly.
Other threats like accidental deletion or malicious deletion and other human errors cannot effect this data either.
The ability to secure data from human errors and cyber-threats is a great asset for organizations and data owners in order to build a compliant IT framework.
Helpful Features
Other features that can help with compliance include synchronous replication, asynchronous replication, encryption, and cloud connect support.
Conclusion
Building a compliant IT framework is a combination of technology, data services, hardware and software features and the implementation of a well thought-out and executed data lifecycle plan. Therefore, compliance isn’t simply the acquisition of a compliant hardware or software, it’s the implementation of an entire culture that revolves around secure, reliable, and predictable workflows.Â
