What Is Compliance Automation?

Compliance automation transforms the audit experience. What was once a burden to bear becomes a competitive advantage that lets your company maximize every opportunity. 

Streamlining the audit process is not the only benefit compliance automation. From higher productivity to stronger security posture, automation improves your compliance program.

What Is Compliance Automation?

Security breaches can happen anytime given the complexity of modern IT systems and the pervasive threat environment. These breaches can cause operational disruption, lost revenue, customer dissatisfaction, and legal or regulatory actions.

Companies simply cannot afford non-compliance.

At the same time, manual processes cannot keep up. People spend increasing amounts of their day checking systems and filling in spreadsheets. Compliance officers must map this evidence against internal policies and external compliance frameworks.

At audit time, these snapshots may not be enough. To satisfy the auditors, compliance teams must shift into overdrive to update the company’s compliance status.

Compliance automation replaces these manual spreadsheet-driven processes with software solutions that:

• Connect requirements to pre-mapped controls.
• Continuously monitor security controls 24-7.
• Cover all on-premises systems, cloud service providers, and SaaS vendors.
• Automatically address minor compliance issues.
• Generate alerts for issues that require staff attention.
• Produce reports to document continuous compliance.

"Every consultant and auditor that we spoke to warned us that our SOC 2 timeline was tight, but we were able to do it with Drata and Schneider Downs."

Joe Reeve, Iteratively

Benefits of Using Compliance Automation

Automation streamlines the auditing process. At the same time, automation improves your compliance and security posture as well as the productivity of your compliance program.

Streamlined Audits

Companies that monitor compliance manually dread requests for audits. They scramble to collect evidence, reconcile spreadsheets, and resolve any resulting issues. Missing or inaccurate data in the final report could compromise the report and present inaccurate data to your customers and prospects.

Compliance automation simplifies the auditing process. With continuous monitoring and evidence collection, all the necessary information is already in one place. 

Certifying compliance continuously rather than at a point in time gives customers more confidence in your company’s ability to maintain compliance and gives you a leg up on your competitors.

Stronger Compliance and Security Posture

Automation is the only way to monitor all systems continuously. Staff time is limited, so manual processes require prioritizing high-risk systems. Letting others go unmonitored for any length of time allows compliance gaps to linger. Software can monitor all systems all the time.

Automation also makes compliance monitoring more accurate. Spreadsheet-based manual processes are prone to human error. Mundane and repetitive spreadsheet work naturally leads to transcription errors and omissions. Letting compliance automation software handle this low-value work eliminates these errors.

With all compliance evidence collected automatically, your staff gains visibility deep into your on-premises and cloud systems. Dashboards give you quick summaries of compliance status. At the same time, you have the tools to dig into issues and gain insights into compliance performance across the organization.

Continuous, error-free monitoring and heightened visibility combine to improve your company’s compliance and security posture. Compliance systems can identify and resolve minor issues automatically. More significant problems get quickly escalated to compliance officers for immediate action. 

Improved Productivity

Employees and contractors spend too much time collecting evidence into spreadsheets. This daily grind wastes the expensive talents these people were hired for. Compliance automation frees people to focus on the high-value, meaningful work that strengthens your compliance efforts.

6 Things to Look for in Compliance Automation Software

Given the importance of compliance to the business, you must carefully evaluate potential compliance partners. Some things to consider include the following:

1. Audit Process Integrity and Knowledge

Compliance is a constantly-evolving field that can challenge even the largest enterprises. You can supplement your company’s in-house compliance talent by choosing partners with strong domain expertise. 

A good audit firm will not only do the audit but also help you understand your compliance, streamline the audit process, and set you on the right path towards a strong compliance program. The wrong audit firm can slow you down and even provide an inaccurate report at the end of the process.

Another challenge companies face is finding independent auditors that understand compliance frameworks as well as the company’s compliance platform. Look for a compliance automation partner who can give you access to networks of vetted independent auditors.

2. Pre-Mapped Controls and Configurability

Every company has a unique combination of IT infrastructure, risk tolerance, and compliance requirements. The partner you choose should offer an extensive list of pre-mapped controls that meet the requirements of the frameworks you're pursuing.

Stay a step ahead in your security and compliance program by looking for a solution that is adaptable and scalable—providing the control variety you need now but may also need in the future. This can give you and your team flexibility and peace of mind in an ever-evolving risk environment.

3. Support for Compliance Frameworks

Solutions that support a variety of frameworks make compliance programs more robust. Rather than running redundant processes, automated evidence collection can simultaneously support and other audits.