Table of Content:
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How Does Zero Trust Security Help Companies Meet Compliance Obligations?
- The Most Common Compliance Regulations:
What is a Compliance Regulation?
A compliance regulation is a law or rule that requires businesses to follow certain guidelines. These regulations are put in place to protect consumers, employees, and other stakeholders. Failure to comply with a compliance regulation can result in heavy fines or jail time.
Compliance regulations vary depending on the industry, but common examples include the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the HIPAA Privacy Rule, and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Businesses must ensure they are aware of all relevant compliance regulations and take steps to ensure compliance.
How Does Zero Trust Security Help Companies Meet Compliance Obligations?
Authentication: Authentication is the process of verifying that someone is who they claim to be, and it's an integral part of Zero Trust and meeting compliance standards. Compliance regulations require that companies properly authenticate users before providing them access to important company resources. Implementing a Zero Trust model ensures proper authentication controls across your organization.
Network Segmentation: In today's connected world, network segmentation is more important than ever. By segmenting your network, you can improve security, reduce complexity, and make it easier to manage your network.
There are several ways to segment a network; the best approach depends on your specific needs. But segmentation generally involves creating logical or physical divisions in your network. This can be done at the network layer (with VLANs, for example) or the application layer (with firewall rules).
Many Compliance regulations require that you segment your network based on security levels. This is to prevent the spread of malware and limit the amount of data someone could steal from the company in the event that they were able to hack the company.
User Monitoring: User monitoring is critical to any organization's accountability efforts. By tracking user activity, organizations can ensure that employees are using company resources appropriately and not engaging in activities that could harm the company. Additionally, user monitoring can help organizations detect and investigate potential security breaches and policy violations.
Data Encryption: Data encryption is the process of transforming readable data into an unreadable format. This is done using a key, which is a piece of information that is used to encrypt and decrypt the data. Encryption is important because it helps to protect data from being accessed by unauthorized individuals.
Data encryption is used in several scenarios, from securing communications between two parties to protecting sensitive information stored on a computer. A zero-trust model mandates that you use encryption across the organization and helps ensure you meet any encryption requirements related to your compliance regulations.
The Most Common Compliance Regulations:
1) GDPR
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a set of regulations that European Union member states must implement to protect digital data privacy. The regulation requires that any company that collects EU citizen data provide individuals with the right to access their personal data, the right to change their personal data, the right to delete their personal data, and the right to object to the processing of their personal data.
2) HIPAA
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a US federal law that was enacted in 1996. The law sets forth several provisions to protect the privacy and security of personal health information. HIPAA also establishes standards for electronic healthcare transactions and national identifiers for healthcare providers.
3) PIPEDA
PIPEDA stands for the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. This Canadian law governs how personal information is collected, used, and disclosed by organizations. PIPEDA applies to all organizations operating in Canada, regardless of size or industry.
The main purpose of PIPEDA is to protect the privacy of individuals by ensuring that their personal information is treated with respect and confidentiality. PIPEDA sets out strict rules about how organizations can collect, use, and disclose personal information. These rules are designed to give individuals control over their personal information and to ensure that organizations handle this information responsibly.
4) CCPA
The CCPA, or the California Consumer Privacy Act, is a new piece of legislation enacted in 2018. The CCPA is designed to give California consumers more control over their personal data. Under the CCPA, businesses must disclose what personal data they collect, why they collect it, and how they use it. Consumers also have the right to request that their personal data be deleted.
The CCPA applies to businesses that collect data from California consumers, regardless of whether the business is located in California. Businesses that meet any of the following criteria must comply with the CCPA:
-Has annual revenues over $25 million
-Collects data from 50,000 or more California consumers, households, or devices
-Derives 50% or more of its annual revenues from selling California consumers' personal data
5) HITRUST
HITRUST stands for Health Information Trust Alliance. It is a non-profit organization that was formed in 2007 to improve the security and privacy of electronic health information. HITRUST is best known for its Common Security Framework (CSF), which is a set of security and privacy controls that organizations can use to protect health information. HITRUST also certifies organizations that meet its stringent security and privacy requirements.
Conclusion
The Zero Trust Security model is a great starting point for ensuring your organization meets its compliance requirements. Zero Trust enforces many important principles, such as network segmentation, user authentication, user monitoring and data encryption, that ensure compliance with major regulations. Organizations seeking compliance should begin by implementing a Zero Trust architecture in their environment.