Compliance Technology Eases Growing Cyber Security and Compliance Challenges

In reaction to an evolving digital landscape and demands from consumers, experts predict millions of new regulations in the next decade. Maintaining and demonstrating compliance with multiple regulatory frameworks can prove costly and overwhelmingly complicated. Fortunately, modern compliance technology can significantly ease the burden of ensuring regulatory compliance.

Non-compliance can bring significant consequences, including stiff fines and loss of reputation and business. However, staying on top of a constantly evolving regulatory environment can quickly exhaust time and resources. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and Microsoft Purview free up internal resources to focus on core business goals.

Increasing Compliance Challenges

A perfect storm of circumstances has resulted in an astonishingly complex regulatory landscape. The data explosion continues, spurred on by advances in big data and the IoT. At the same time, the global pandemic accelerated digitization of systems and mass migration to the cloud. The move to remote work broadened the attack surface overnight.

To address the needs created by a hybrid workforce and constant connectivity, developers have released new technologies in all sectors. While essential to moving work forward and driving innovation, the rapid pace of new technology has created cyber security gaps.

At the same time, cyber criminals have also developed new and increasingly sophisticated technology. And consumers, concerned about the consequences of digitization and the threat of data compromise, demand protections for their sensitive data. Governments and industry regulators alike respond with complicated regulations.

Benefits of Compliance Technology

Human ingenuity and effort alone prove insufficient to address cyber security and compliance challenges. Even if it were possible to manually track, manage and analyze enormous caches of data, human error and comparative slowness make the manual process costly and impossibly inefficient.

Compliance technology, on the other hand, delivers key benefits that include:

• Automating processes – Automation of processes such as data classification, data lifecycle and reporting frees up resources and reduces the chance for error.
• Adapting to evolving regulations – Staying up to date with regulatory changes can prove prohibitively time-consuming. Compliance solutions help businesses discover and interpret regulatory changes, as well as implement necessary changes.
• Assess and remediate compliance and security risks – Robust risk assessment tools help organizations identify risks quickly, prioritize risk management and apply necessary remediation measures.
• Reduce costs – By identifying risks and compliance issues more quickly and automating processes, compliance technology improves efficiency and lowers costs.

AI and Machine Learning

With the ability to rapidly process massive amounts of data, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning prove critical to the compliance process. By automating routine processes and analyzing data to spot trends and patterns, they save time, reduce errors, and facilitate proactive response.

For instance, AI removes the guesswork out of incorporating regulatory changes into policies and workflows. Instead of deploying personnel to constantly review regulations, AI-driven tools can interpret developments quickly and recommend necessary process updates.

Additionally, AI and machine learning enhance risk management. By automating compliance and security monitoring and analyzing patterns, they spot risks early and send automatic alerts to the right people.

Microsoft Compliance Tools

As a global leader in productivity and communication tools, Microsoft takes cyber security and regulatory compliance seriously. In April 2022, the company introduced Microsoft Purview, a comprehensive toolset for managing data governance, compliance, and risk.

Purview combines the capabilities of Azure Purview with Microsoft 365 Compliance into a unified data governance solution. To support compliance, Purview tools automate data classification, discovery, and end-to-end data lineage. They also allow organizations to label sensitive data, define retention policies, monitor for sharing violations and prevent accidental data loss.

Harness the Benefits of Compliance Technology

The consultants at Messaging Architects will help your organization identify and implement compliance technology solutions tailored to your business. With deep expertise in cyber security and compliance and extensive experience in Microsoft, they will help you successfully navigate the complex compliance and security landscape.

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