Multiple Compliance Standards to Meet? Live Linking Makes That Mountain into a Molehill

Compliance management involves a mountain of agonizing manual labor. But what if you could make a molehill out of that mountain?

If you have multiple compliance standards to meet — maybe HIPAA, PCI DSS, ISO 27001 and SOC 2 — then you’ll have common elements to fulfill across those certifications. For example, the overall Information Security Policy is required by all of these standards.

Typically, you have to manually add these overlapping requirements separately to each compliance standard — and often, to multiple line items within each standard. You could be placing a single document (such as your central Information Security Policy) in hundreds of locations across just a couple standards.

That’s a ton of duplicate work. And when (not if!) a piece of evidence needs to be tweaked, you’ve got to update that document in every location of each standard. That means going back in and finding every instance of that document. If you’ve done this before, you know what a pain it is — and how easily human error creeps in.

When you’re managing complex compliance engagements, one of the biggest headaches is just trying to keep everything in sync. So many things are changing. So many inputs from so many different directions, across so many certifications. Invariably, your evidence has a tendency to diverge and you end up splintering your evidence as you scramble for the finish line.

What if you didn’t have to do all that? Imagine going through a compliance cycle without duplicating your work. TCT’s new Live Linking feature ends all that pain.

Related: [Podcast] Handling Multiple Compliance Certifications

Live Linking for Multiple Certifications

Live Linking is a new feature in TCT’s compliance management software, TCT Portal. Live Linking lets you connect multiple certifications to each other. When you load evidence into one requirement on one certification, it automatically appears everywhere it needs to be in the other tracks, as well.

No more manually loading one piece of evidence countless times to multiple locations and certifications.

If you need to make an update to the evidence, just edit and replace it once, and TCT Portal instantly updates all of the other instances of the evidence as well.

We’ve previewed Live Linking to our customers and they are really freaking excited about this new feature. Compliance teams just want their jobs to be easier, and now it is.

Imagine how much faster your job will be when you can attach your evidence once and — poof — it shows up in dozens of locations on the destination certifications.

This guide will give you the basics of PCI and help you figure out how to make your certification journey as simple as possible.

Business Benefits of TCT’s Live Linking

Not only does Live Linking make your compliance management more bearable, it actually helps make your business stronger.

• Boost your team’s productivity. Live linking dramatically streamlines engagements, and lets you cruise through your compliance more expediently and with greater consistency.
• Onboard new staff more quickly. Live Linking simplifies your compliance activities by eliminating countless manual tasks. That means an easier learning curve for new staff.
• Keep your customers (and sales team) happy. Keep your compliance engagement on schedule so your clients who depend on your certifications won’t get antsy and your sales team won’t get anxious.
• Reduce operational costs. More efficient internal resources means less wasted time, fewer operational costs, and less need for hiring more staff.

Linking Customized Certifications

TCT Portal can link any industry certification you want. We can even create and link customized certifications for your organization.

Your organization’s approach might be not to use an industry standard itself, but to use a document request list that includes all the compliance activities you need to perform, evidence required, and people to interview. We can create a customized certification for you that’s proprietary to your company, which you alone use.

With Live Linking, you can load certain document elements such as your information security policy, your network diagrams, or your data flow diagram. As you’re connecting your items and linking them to your customized certification, Live Linking can map off of the customized certification and flow down to the standard certification tracks.

Make a Mountain into a Molehill

Stop wasting time, end the pain of manual loading and reloading, and get through your compliance engagement faster. TCT’s Live Linking makes a molehill out of the mountain of attaching policies and evidence.

Live Linking comes standard with every license of TCT Portal. If you’re already a TCT customer, you can use it today!