3+ Things You Can Do Now to Prepare for Your Annual Compliance Cycle

Whether you’ve already completed your first audit or you’re planning your compliance calendar for the new year, you know that compliance is more than a bullet point on a strategy slide deck—it’s a serious investment and a process that will recur year-over-year, so you can’t drop the ball in between assessments, especially amidst an ever-evolving cyberthreat landscape. To help your organization remain safeguarded between your audit cycles, you should seek to strengthen and streamline your compliance—the good news is, there are ways to do that.

The fourth quarter of the year is typically when much business is concluded and planning begins for the next year, and preparing for your next—or first—compliance cycle must be part of that, and we’re going to help point you in the right direction.

Having been performing assessments for over two decades now, we’ve seen where organizations stumble in both their audits and their cybersecurity—as such, we know what can help you avoid similar pitfalls. In this article, we’ll provide three big moves you can make to boost your cybersecurity and compliance initiatives, along with other important tips, so that your business can continue to meet regulatory requirements, avoid penalties, and maintain operational efficiency ahead of your next audit.

3 Investments to Strengthen Your Next Compliance Audit

Among the many things you can do to effectively prepare for your next year of compliance, there’s some variance—some are larger endeavors and some are less resource-intensive.

Our recommendations that follow are a mix of both.

1. Have a Readiness Assessment Performed.

Maybe you’re not just preparing for your next audit—maybe you’re preparing for your first. If that’s the case, one of the most valuable investments you can make is in a readiness assessment.

Though it doesn’t provide the same assurance as your actual audit will, having a gap assessment performed first can set you up for more efficient success, as the process involves your auditors evaluating your current controls against your chosen compliance requirements to identify any gaps or areas of improvement.

Doing this ahead of your higher-stakes assessment will help you avoid surprises during that process—surprises that, depending on exactly what you’re missing, could derail the assurance you intend to provide to stakeholders. But through a readiness assessment, you’ll have the time to address any items that still need it so that your next audit goes quicker and to plan.

For more specific details on these precursors, check out our other content:

• What to Expect from a SOC 2 Readiness Assessment
• What is a PCI DSS Readiness Assessment?
• ISO 27001 Readiness Assessment or Consultant? When to Contract

2. Perform a Penetration Test. 

Penetration testing, including social engineering campaigns, can also be a great way to shore up your cybersecurity overall—beyond AI—in that these simulated attacks can help identify specific weaknesses in your systems, depending on what you ask your testers to target.

If you’re seeking FedRAMP or PCI DSS compliance, pen tests are specifically required with certain parameters, but in fact, any type or size or organization—no matter what compliance framework you’re working to meet—can also benefit from these exercises that replicate real-world attacks perpetuated by malicious actors every day.

3. Educate Employees Through CPE-Eligible Training. 

As the human component of compliance and cybersecurity is just as important to prepare and maintain—that’s something training can help strengthen.

You should already be conducting regular security awareness training among your staff regarding best security practices, how to identify threats like phishing, and each person’s specific security responsibilities, but investing in additional education for your team can:

• Optimize Your Organization’s Compliance: Through training, your team will gain deeper insight, practical skills, and confidence, all of which will enable them to manage their compliance responsibilities more effectively while avoiding mistakes that could lead to audit findings.
• Boost Audit Readiness: Employees who participate in CPE training are better prepared to handle the demands of a compliance audit. They understand what auditors are looking for and can provide the necessary documentation and explanations efficiently.
• Improve Organizational Cyber Defense: Similarly, highly trained staff will be better equipped to design, implement, and monitor internal controls essential for compliance, which should smooth out your audit process.
• Reduce your Risk of Non-Compliance: Trained employees are more likely to identify potential compliance risks early and take corrective actions before they become audit issues. This proactive approach reduces the likelihood of audit findings, and more than that, it may also be a contractual requirement with customers or something to discuss with your insurance broker as a discount opportunity.

Other Important Steps to Take In Preparation for Next Year’s Audit

While the previous examples all involve some sort of concrete financial investment, the following are instead (mostly) more time-intensive internally—though they are no less important and no less helpful.

Some other key things to do in preparation for your next assessment include:

• Review and Update Relevant Documentation: Conduct a thorough review of all existing policies, procedures, and system/data inventories to ensure they align with all the latest compliance standards and regulations that you’re subject to or have chosen to undergo so that you can ensure everything remains effective, update anything outdated, communicate all changes to relevant staff. If a comprehensive review isn’t feasible, at the very least, do so for the policies or procedures relevant to departments or teams that have had significant turnover or process changes.
  • Of special note are any plans for incident response, business continuity, and disaster recovery you may have in place—not only should these all be similarly reviewed and updated to ensure they’re current with the threat landscape and security practices, but you should also run table-top exercises or other drills to test their effectiveness so that you can make any necessary improvements.
• Conduct Internal Audits and Risk Assessments: Before your external assessor returns, you should schedule an internal audit and risk assessment to keep abreast of what you need to address before that independent audit—this should include a review of your vendors, their security assessments, and their current access to your data/systems to ensure your third-party partners remain secure with only the access that they need for their current responsibilities regarding your data.
• Review and Revise Tools and Technologies: While you’ll be evaluating the effectiveness of technical security controls as part of your internal audit, you should also review whether you should take your implementations further, be it in the form of compliance management software that can help automate and track related tasks and deadlines, or if you should invest in further security measures, like endpoint protection, network monitoring, network segmentation, and data loss prevention.
• Monitor and Plan for Regulatory Changes: To ensure you’re not caught off guard ahead of your next assessment or by new emerging and relevant standards, it’s important to research and prepare for any regulatory changes that are expected to take effect so that you can best position your organization to stay compliant—if changes are indeed anticipated, develop a process to quickly adapt policies, procedures, and practices for now and for the future.

Get Ready for Your Next Assessment 

As the year draws to a close, it’s an ideal time for organizations to reflect on their IT compliance and cybersecurity strategies and prepare for the year ahead. To ensure your organization starts the new year on a strong footing, consider taking the aforementioned steps, as they can help bolster your organization’s cybersecurity posture and strengthen your compliance.

Of course, having the right assessor can also make a world of difference, and if you’re interested in learning more about Schellman and whether we’re the right partner for you—in these preparatory initiatives and more—contact us today.

In the meantime, make sure to reap the additional insight in these articles, which could also help optimize your assessment process and experience:

• Are Information Technology General Controls (ITGCs) Important?
• How to Maximize the Value of Your Compliance
• Preparing for Your Audit: 3 Mindsets to Have