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Despite the challenges facing virtually every IT Operations team, compliance initiatives are no longer reserved for the unlucky few its a fundamental requirement for all of IT. But how can teams solve their most pressing security frustrations? It starts with continuous compliance, says Claire McDyre, product manager at Puppet by Perforce.

Security is a national concern, with the White House recently announcing its investments in a resilient future and dismantling threat actorsOpens a new window . This strategy aims to defend critical infrastructure, extend the scope, and share liability by expanding the use of minimum cybersecurity requirements in critical sectors to ensure national security and public safety and harmonizing regulations to reduce the burden of compliance. Further, organizations can reduce the cost of compliance by adhering to best practices within their everyday IT procedures, systems, and tools.

Companies are now expected to meet regulatory and internal best-practice standards, resulting in IT operations (ITOps) teams being pressed to work increasingly efficiently across heterogeneous technologies, all while remaining mindful of cost containment and limited availability of skilled resources. Risk management programs, formalized processes designed to keep organizations safe across a capricious threat landscape, are driving many of these requirements.

Failure to comply with a regulated mandate can result in millions of dollars in fines. For example, severe violations of the European Unions (EU) general data protection regulation (GDPR) can lead to penalties of up to 20 million eurosOpens a new window , or up to 4% of the total global turnover of the preceding fiscal year, whichever is higher! But how can teams solve their most pressing security frustrations? It starts with a proactive and preventative approach with continuous compliance.

For enterprise organizations, compliance extends beyond a single audit. The IT infrastructure landscape is constantly evolving, bringing to light two important aspects the audit process and the resulting enforcement of the policy. These two components are time intensive and ultimately highlight the importance of a robust audit framework. Continuous compliance is the process of automating those practices to ensure technology is constantly audit-ready and continuously protected from threats.

According to a 2023 State of DevOps surveyOpens a new window , self-service platform teams are actively seeking better methodologies for maintaining infrastructure security and compliance. In fact, over 40% said they intend to automate their platforms governance, compliance, and information security policies over the next 12 months.

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Compliance is a tactical declaration that all stated rules and requirements are satisfied, and it requires proactively mitigating the risks that have already been identified. Each risk requires its own process with audit readiness, and being constantly prepared ideally, well before an auditmeans problems can be addressed before they have negative consequences. It also streamlines the formal audit process, which now takes on the role of validating the appropriateness and completion of ongoing compliance activities.

Audits are incredibly burdensome, partly due to the proliferation of devices and users as companies grow. Audits are perceived as formal exercises performed only when mandated by regulatory mandates. Complicating things further, security benchmarks upon which audits are based continuously evolve to keep pace with new risks, updated standards, and new technologies.

Being continuously compliant means consistently complying with various requirements outlined by common industry standards. Ongoing activities should include secure configuration management, as well as access control, vulnerability management, and malware defenses. Many opportunities exist to simplify these requirements through automation, greatly easing the audit burden as a result.

The center for internet security (CIS) benchmarks are a great resource for secure configuration management that many organizations have adopted as the industry standard for system measurement. The benchmarks are prescriptive guidelines on how to securely configure the variety of technologies being managed. Another Security configuration standardpopular with U.S. government agencies is the defense information security agencys (DISA) security technical implementation guides (STIGs).

Organizations are often required to comply with more than one regulation. Fortunately, all of them carry a common expectation of good security hygiene and adopting and implementing CIS benchmarks as the foundation establishes crosswalks for demonstrating compliance to them all. That foundational step will contribute greatly towards the overall requirements of any regulation.

After a comprehensive audit, organizations will know how configurations need to be altered initially to become compliant. But what about ongoing enforcement? And what happens when the standards being enforced are updated?

The manual evaluation and enforcement of secure configurations is time-consuming and complex, and fraught with the potential of human error, leading many ITOps to reject involvement until the security team has identified a risk. However, being proactive doesnt have to burden forward-thinking ITOps teams, even when security standards change.

Automation can facilitate compliance with minimal imposition on an ITOps teams valuable time and resources. Focus can then shift to projects with greater business value. Being prepared for an audit at a moments notice brings peace of mind, as does having instant insight into the state of compliance throughout the entire estate, inclusive of on-premise, cloud, and hybrid environments. Autonomous scans quickly identify areas of non-compliance, and failures are remediated consistently and without intervention. The desired state is enforced automatically by declaring policy as code, utilizing expert-built content and tailored modules. Embedded CIS scanning ensures compliance is always evaluated against the most up-to-date security standards, accommodating the latest risks and new technologies.

Whether its one person managing dozens of servers or a team managing thousands of servers, its critical to have control and clear visibility to ensure compliance with regulatory frameworks and internal security policies. Remember, achieving initial compliance is just one aspect of security.

Continuous compliance enforcement is the best solution for managing secure configurations. Ask your ITOps team about the time spent preparing for their last audit and addressing all the discovered shortfalls chances are, it was frantic and stressful. By adopting continuous compliance for secure system configurations as a foundational step, organizations will be positioned to successfully navigate their current and future security or compliance mandates.

What steps have you taken toward continuous compliance? How has it benefited you? Share with us on FacebookOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , and LinkedInOpens a new window .

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Why Continuous Compliance Is a Necessity - Spiceworks News and Insights