Information Technology Security Address Regulation Changes

In the realm of information technology security, addressing regulatory changes means making sure that the way your organization protects sensitive data aligns with specific legal, industry, and other standards. These standards can include government regulations, industry guidelines, and best practices. These policies set the groundwork for how a business should protect its data, as well as establishes penalties for non-compliance.

For example, New York State Department of Financial Services (NYS DFS) has created a cybersecurity regulation to protect its regulated financial institutions. This is the first regulation of its kind at a state level and sets a high bar for all organizations regulated by NYS DFS. It requires the CISO to be independent, includes penetration testing and vulnerability assessment requirements, and includes a reporting requirement. It also has tiers of enhanced requirements based on company size and revenue.

This regulation will affect the majority of businesses regulated by NYS DFS, including banks, credit unions, and other financial service providers. The regulation is a precursor to a possible national cybersecurity standard, as the Federal Reserve is working on a similar regulation that will also cover large banks.

Cybersecurity regulations are changing rapidly as companies face increasing pressure to be transparent about their cybersecurity practices. The Securities and Exchange Commission has been pushing publicly traded companies to be more transparent about their incident response, while the GDPR places new obligations on European organizations to disclose breaches to their citizens. In addition, the National Institute of Standards and Technology has released a revised version of its NIST Cybersecurity Framework that increases emphasis on governance and supply chain security.

How Does Information Technology Security Address Regulation Changes?

Creating stakeholder friendly policies that are easily adopted by both the teams responsible for implementing and enforcing them, and the users affected by them is one of the key challenges to ensuring compliance and security effectiveness. Overly restrictive or impractical requirements or complex instructions can cause a policy to be ignored, circumvented, or undermined. Policies should build off of existing practices and be clear and concise to avoid overwhelming or intimidating IT or security teams.

The information technology security landscape is constantly changing as attackers evolve, and businesses are forced to respond quickly to stay ahead of threats. For this reason, it is important to keep up with these changes in regulatory requirements and emerging cybersecurity threats by keeping up with the latest research. This can be done by conducting frequent threat intelligence assessments, identifying and deploying new monitoring tools, educating employees on phishing awareness, and establishing clear procedures for reporting incidents promptly.

Keeping up with these changes in regulatory requirements can be difficult, especially when there is a constant need to adjust IT systems. To ease this burden, it is critical to use an automated system that enables the CISO and IT team to update policies and alerts in real-time without any manual intervention. This can help organizations reduce time spent on implementing these changes and increase their likelihood of success. This will also help ensure that policies and other controls remain current even as systems are updated or replaced.