Safeguarding Consumer, Community—and your Company’s Future

Compliance is a crucial concern for your company, whatever its size and whatever industry you’re in. Yet it’s an area that business owners don’t always understand fully. And unfortunately, being out of compliance can have costly ramifications.

First, what is compliance?

Very simply, compliance refers to being in accordance with established regulations and guidelines—and to the process of getting in line with those specifications. It means ensuring that your organization and employees follow all applicable laws, standards, and ethical practices for your business and industry.

What’s somewhat less simple is that these regulations are constantly evolving and expanding, and it is critical that your company stay fully abreast of all current requirements. 

There are two main types of compliance: Corporate and Regulatory. Each type has its own framework of regulations, rules, controls, practices, and processes that provide security, protect digital assets, minimize risk, set standards, increase accountability and transparency, and so forth.

Corporate compliance refers to how a business makes sure they’re following their own internal compliance structure, which includes the company’s set standards and measures of quality assurance, ethics, code of conduct, best practices, and so forth. 

Regulatory compliance deals with adherence to regulations that are required by law—legislation and legal mandates by governing bodies that apply to your industry. 

The general public is familiar with some of these regulations on the consumer end because we encounter them in daily life, such as when we sign the privacy statement in a doctor’s office or are alerted that a website is using “cookies.”

Examples of prominent compliance agencies and legislation include: 

• Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
• Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
• Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 / HIPAA Title II: Protects privacy of patient data; ensures confidentiality; mandates standardization of electronic health records systems.
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): European Union’s data privacy legislation to protect consumers.
• Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002: Protects shareholders and the public from fraud and accounting issues; regulates how business records are stored in IT systems. 
• Can Spam Act of 2003: Regulates use of commercial email.
• Dodd-Frank Act: Transparency and accountability regulations for banks. 
• Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard: (PCI DSS) Ensures security of credit/debit/cash card transactions.
• Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA): Protects data / reduces risk by requiring federal agencies to review information security programs annually 
• Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA): Establishes regulations to protect worker health and safety in the U.S., since 1971.

Information Technology compliance typically has aspects that fall under both Regulatory and Corporate categories. Applicable laws and requirements vary from business to business depending on the technologies used in specific industries and their particular digital security requirements, as well as a company’s distinct standards based on the needs of the customer. Proper IT compliance provides security in all these areas. IT teams must manage compliance to protect the organization, maintain efficiency, block breaches, stay up-to-date, avoid penalties, and safeguard vital customer data.

A compliance audit is a periodic, comprehensive review and report that assesses how well a business is keeping in accordance with the law. Failing an audit indicates that some key security systems and protocols are insufficient. In addition to a loss of trust and reputation with your client base, being out of compliance can cost your company money: you may incur fines, or be sued. There’s also the internal expense of determining what went wrong and correcting the problem. All this can add up to painful downtime for your business. Further, your company could be flagged for heightened monitoring by federal agencies.

At Lukasa, we’re experienced in a wide variety of technical frameworks. Working alongside your team to get to know your business intimately, we develop modern, unified, custom solutions to make sure all aspects of your business and systems are up-to-date, integrated, agile—and compliant with the law and highest standards in your industry. We can help you supercharge growth, productivity, efficiency, and profitability, and avoid the problems of falling behind in technology and compliance.

About Lukasa - lukasa.com
Lukasa empowers small-to-medium-sized businesses by designing and implementing custom business and technology solutions that drive efficiency, productivity, and innovation, enabling them to stay ahead in today’s rapidly-changing competitive landscape.