IT Compliance tools for the Enterprise (Banks, Insurance, Healthcare)

Organizations that operate in the enterprise space – healthcare, insurance, banks, etc. – have unique and challenging cybersecurity compliance obligations. Enterprise data is, after all, frequently targeted.

Some compliance standards are government-mandated, others are marketplace-driven. However, consistently maintaining enterprise compliance in a constantly shifting cybersecurity environment isn’t easy.

In this article we outline why enterprise data compliance is critical, and point to key tools that can boost your organization’s efforts to meet compliance standards such as SOC 2, FedRAMP and ISO 27001.

Contents:

1. Enterprise Data Breaches Are Serious, Commonplace – And Difficult to Prevent

2. Common Enterprise Compliance Standards – And Why Standards Matter

3. Tools That Help Deliver Compliance

4. Using KernelCare For Rapid SOC2, FedRAMP Compliance

5. Compliance requires automation

Enterprise Data Breaches Are Serious, Commonplace – And Difficult to Prevent

Large organizations present valuable targets for cybercriminals. A single successful hack can render hundreds of millions of valuable records. The aftermath varies from the expensive, to the catastrophic and irrecoverable.

According to a Ponemon Institute survey the average cost of a breach in the US runs to $8.64 million. But for enterprises, the costs can be far higher.

To understand how real and how serious an enterprise data breach can be, just take a look at Canadian lender Desjardins, which spent $53 million to clean up a breach. Or British Airways and Marriott, allocating $100 million each in costs after a successful breach in 2019.

Cost aside, breaches are also frequent, often affecting millions of people – with the consequent reputational damage. No amount of money can instantly restore lost trust.

Common Enterprise Compliance Standards – And Why Standards Matter

The potential severity of an enterprise data breach and the large number of people affected have led to an increasing role for compliance standards. Government-driven standards including CCPA, GDPR and FedRAMP intend to deliver a basic level of protection to the customers of large enterprises and government agencies.

Industry standards including SOC 2 and ISO 27001 are not mandated by law, but compliance can prove reassuring to enterprise customers. In fact, some enterprise markets may demand compliance with industry standards.

In other words, enterprises that are not compliant may violate the law, and risk losing existing and potential clients. Meeting the requirements behind compliance standards is not easy, however.

Data security is a complex environment with many moving parts – and compliance requires continuous efforts. Large enterprises can find that manual, human-driven security efforts quickly fall short. Worse, compliance can easily drift, risking a failed audit.

Tools That Help Deliver Compliance

Automation is a critical tool in enterprise compliance – and arguably the best tool to prevent compliance drift over time. In this section we take a look at some of the tools that can help your organization ramp up and maintain compliance.

Vulnerability Scanning

Common and known security vulnerabilities are frequently the root cause of a successful cyberattack. That’s why compliance standards put a strong emphasis on vulnerability management. However, the scope of enterprise IT services and the frequent updates typical of cloud services make vulnerabilities very difficult to manage consistently.

Automated vulnerability scanners such as Nessus from Tenable or open-source OpenVAS can automatically identify Linux vulnerabilities – and rank vulnerabilities for targeted action. Likewise, Intruder offers cloud-based network vulnerability scanning targeted at enterprise networks to automatically flag network vulnerabilities.

Automated Patching

Vendors usually issue patches to fix vulnerabilities as soon as a security flaw is discovered and a vulnerability that is patched should no longer pose a cybersecurity risk. Yet due to the sheer volume of patches released throughout the year it’s common for patching to be delayed or to be incomplete.

Automating the patching process helps teams to keep on top of patch releases – removing vulnerabilities and boosting compliance. Take ConnectWise Automate, a tool that automates the updating of third-party software, for example. Or, indeed KernelCare which automates the patching of Linux environments.

Process Automation

Compliance involves frequently repeated checks – each driven by a process. Similarly, processes drive compliance by ensuring that key steps are never missed. But processes are challenging to develop and difficult to maintain persistently.

Process automation tools such as ProcessMaker or Mitratech’s TAP makes it easier to build compliant processes and to ensure that processes are persistently followed. In turn, process automation helps you to maintain persistent compliance.

Using KernelCare For Rapid SOC2, FedRAMP Compliance

We mentioned automated patching in the previous section citing KernelCare as an example. We’ll conclude this article by taking a deeper look at why KernelCare is a critical tool for compliance in Linux-driven enterprise environments.

First, with KernelCare Enterprise, organizations can automate Linux kernel updates, automatically patching vulnerabilities and thereby ensuring that security risks are eliminated as fast as possible.

KernelCare Enterprise delivers another essential benefit. Patching live servers often involves a server restart – which means the service supported by the server goes offline. Service disruption is extremely inconvenient and, as a result, server restarts are often avoided – and patching is delayed.

Thanks to KernelCare, organizations can perform live patching. KernelCare ensures continuous patching of Linux environments, both servers and IoT, without the need to continuously reboot the machine that is patched.

Avoiding the need to reboot a machine when patching greatly speeds up patching – and compliance. Take Efinity Insurance, for example, a KernelCare customer that achieved SOC 2 certification in just two months in part thanks to live patching.

Likewise, KernelCare Enterprise can help organizations that deliver cloud services to the Federal Government to meet the security assessment standards in FedRAMP.

Compliance requires automation

For enterprise-scale organizations compliance is mandatory, but difficult. Your organization needs all the help it can get. The solution lies in background, automated solutions that deliver frictionless compliance are critical to persistent data and security.

Read more about how KernelCare Enterprise can deliver enterprise compliance in Linux environments and try KernelCare Enterprise for free.