Is Your Compliance Engagement Running You?

Let’s be honest about your security/compliance program. You aren’t running a compliance engagement — it’s running you.

If you’re like most compliance teams, it constantly feels like your organization is getting dragged behind your compliance engagement, and you feel subservient to your compliance engagement. It doesn’t serve your company’s needs, you’re serving a tyrannical compliance program.

When your company took on its first compliance standard, you did it because it would make your company more robust, more resilient, and perhaps even more attractive to certain clients. That’s the way that a compliance program should work — it should serve the needs of your organization, to help you be more successful and more confident in your data protection.

But for many companies, the complexity and demands of compliance standards leave teams hard pressed to keep up, and they struggle to have everything in order for annual audits. 

The chaos gets exponentially worse when you tack on additional compliance standards — for example, not only do you have PCI DSS to comply with, you also have SOC 2 and NIST CSF. You’re continually trying to keep up with multiple audit deadlines and there’s never any breathing room. The slightest hiccups have major ripple effects.

This isn’t how compliance management is supposed to work. How did you end up in this position?

Your Approach to Compliance Could Be Hurting You

At the end of the day, it comes down to how you approach your compliance engagement. If your organization doesn’t value compliance or the benefits that your company gains from it, then no one will prioritize the processes or technologies that could make compliance management easier.

If you put investment into compliance management, you’ll reap certain benefits and rewards. Many organizations invest as little as possible into compliance, because it’s seen as nothing more than a cost center. 

I often hear these companies say that what they’re doing works fine as-is. “We’ve managed to figure it out,” they say. “The team gets it done.” But there’s a huge difference between surviving your annual compliance cycle and running it efficiently and effectively. 

You can run your compliance engagements capably, or they can run you mercilessly. 

The Wrong Compliance Tools Will Ultimately Haunt You

There’s also the question of technology. If you’re relying on primitive tools — like spreadsheets — you don’t have a chance to gain control of compliance management.

It’s kind of like trying to build a house and using rocks to drive nails, instead of hammers. Can it be done? Yes, technically. Does it save money? It eliminates a line item from your budget — but you’d be crazy not to invest in pneumatic nail guns.

Likewise, you need the right tools to run your compliance engagements. Yes, there’s an investment, but it’s a necessary one that will pay off in spades. It keeps your people sane. It frees up hours and potentially overtime. It streamlines your activities and puts you in control of compliance management. 

The bottom line: your overall costs are lowered, you’re freeing up time for your most valuable commodity (your resources), you have a more successful compliance program, and your company becomes more productive.

The Damaging Impact on Your Compliance Personnel

For many organizations, their annual compliance run is akin to a fire drill. The bell goes off, everyone grabs their fireproof jackets, hoses, and air tanks, and they all hustle to put the fire out. It’s a once-per-year mad scramble that feels a lot like an emergency situation. 

The compliance endeavor is driving the organization, not the other way around. They don’t have any choice — compliance has to be done every year. Invariably, it’s astronomically stressful. 

When compliance is running you, it takes an unnecessary drain on your organization overall. You have a lot of people putting in more work and effort than they need to. For the folks who are participating in it, without gaining a sense of relief, it grinds on them non-stop. 

Ask anyone in the security and compliance space — if their organization has taken the fire drill approach, they’re burned out before they can even see the finish line. They’re exhausted mentally, physically, and emotionally. It’s been months of full-time stress and urgency —  often with a good dose of overtime. And there have been countless mini fires to put out along the way.

It’s hard to overstate how stressful a compliance engagement is for the core group at the center of it all. Trying to manage compliance with a spreadsheet is a lot like using rocks instead of hammers. 

Related: How Proactive Planning Reduces Compliance Stress: A Step-by-Step Guide

I’ve seen a fairly high level of turnover on the core compliance teams. Even with the right tools, compliance management is a stressful job. And when you lose the people at the center of your compliance program, you’re losing invaluable organizational knowledge that won’t be recovered quickly.

Security/compliance is one of those areas with a widening skill gap, which means hiring takes longer to fill empty positions. Making it even worse is the fact that you’re on a schedule to hit a quickly approaching assessment deadline that’s not moving. You could be in a really bad spot.

I’ve seen a situation where the central compliance person left the company suddenly, with just four months to go before the annual assessment. Thankfully, the organization was using TCT Portal, and they didn’t suffer anywhere near the levels of pain that other companies would face. 

The organizational knowledge was preserved in the Portal, and tasks were easily redistributed, with clear instructions that were easy to find. The automated workflow kept the team on track and the engagement status continued to be updated in real time.

Everyone knew what their new assignments were, and adjusting to the sudden vacancy was not a catastrophic event. 

Ending the Chaos of Compliance

TCT was created with the purpose of making compliance management suck less. We’ve successfully built an automation platform called TCT Portal, which transforms the compliance experience. Companies that have been run by their compliance engagements are now running them. The chaos is gone and they’re in control of their security/compliance programs.

These companies know what they’re doing, and their workflows are streamlined so well, there’s very little overtime needed specifically to support the program. They’re ready for the annual audit and they go into the assessment feeling confident that all their ducks are in a row.

Organizations that were continually blindsided with bad news in front of their Assessors are now acing their annual audits.

Central repository of evidence

TCT Portal is a compliance management tool that automatically organizes and maintains a central repository of information and evidence. That’s a game changer, because you always know exactly what your engagement status is. And your evidence is always at your fingertips — there’s never any frantic searching through dozens of storage locations.

Eliminate duplicate work

TCT Portal allows you to upload your evidence once, and automatically populate it in every line item it belongs to. For example, your overall data protection policy can be uploaded once, and then automatically linked to the multitude of requirements that call for that policy.

Maintain organizational knowledge

With TCT Portal, you have a crystal clear historical repository of who did what in previous years. When a key employee has moved on, they don’t leave behind a vacuum of organizational knowledge. There’s no need to stare at a convoluted spreadsheet, scour countless possible locations for evidence and try to sleuth together a bunch of clues. Instead, your new employee can see exactly what to do, based on historical data.

No more chaos

TCT Portal eliminates those annual fire drills, too, and it puts you in command of your compliance program. Immediately, your organization reaches a whole new level of compliance maturity, because your engagement is automatically ordered and clarified. 

Your workflow is automated and your live engagement status is immediately viewable by everyone on the team. You know exactly what needs to be done, by whom, and by what deadline. You know exactly where your evidence is located and what items are still outstanding. You know what items have been reviewed by the Assessor, what’s been passed up to their QA, and what (if anything) needs rework.

In other words, you’re running your compliance engagement like a pro.

Get in Control — And STAY in Control

After your first compliance cycle is complete, TCT’s Operational Mode kicks in to keep your compliance program on track and under control for the long term. And thanks to Operational Mode, your second year with TCT Portal is even more streamlined than the first year.

Related: TCT Portal Is a Lifesaver Right Away — But It’s Even Better in Year 2

Depending on your certification, there are ongoing compliance tasks that need to be done every day, week, month, quarter, semi-annually, and once a year. Operational Mode keeps you on target to complete all of those periodic elements that should be done throughout the year on a regular basis.

Automated reminders are sent to the right people at the right time, so tasks are clear and manageable. This helps you to proactively alert team members of their responsibilities, confirm that tasks are getting done, and quickly identify any items needing attention to get back on track.

Operational Mode helps you avoid that chaotic rush of activity. When the audit comes along, you already have all of your evidence ready to go. There’s no chaos, no mad rush, no tough questions to answer with your Assessor.

What TCT Customers Are Saying

Our customers experience a tremendous sense of relief from using TCT Portal. They report having significantly lower stress levels, and far less overtime. They experience an ordered path to the annual assessment, and a much more harmonious relationship with their Assessor. 

Here’s what some of our customers are saying about TCT Portal:

“Using the Portal was the only way that we could have stayed sane and kept everything organized.” — Scott Martin, Transaction Services

“Without TCT Portal, it would have easily doubled our reporting time.” — Nicole Braun, Confide

“It’s so much less stressful now. TCT Portal has been a game-changer for us.” — Joseph Kurfehs, Information Security Management

Case Study: Transaction Services Manages Their PCI Certification in Record Time

Run Your Compliance Engagements with Confidence

Imagine going into your annual compliance audit feeling confident that you have all your ducks in a row. 

Imagine having everything at your fingertips and being able to produce it upon request by the Assessor and better yet, include your Assessor into your workflow.

Imagine knowing that you won’t be blindsided by any questions or unforeseen issues during the audit.

With TCT Portal, you’re running your compliance engagement with confidence and competence — it’s no longer running you.

Ready to run your compliance engagements? Book your personalized demo today and see what TCT Portal can do for you.