Maintaining compliance with data regulations remains an important concern for businesses in today’s data-driven marketplace. As generative AI and social changes encourage rapid evolution in security perceptions across all industries, 85% of consumers believe companies should disclose their practices more transparently, according to Gartner’s latest Legal and Compliance Risks Report.
In that environment, how a company deploys and discloses its identity & access management (IAM) workflow determines more than its legal status. IAM strategies drive trustworthiness and loyalty between businesses and their target consumers, predicting an even greater emphasis on access management and data security compliance in 2025 and beyond.
What is Identity & Access Management?
The security policies that control access to a business’s cloud environment, including promoting and demoting individual user access based on their credentials, are collectively known as its IAM framework.
Modern IAM systems authenticate individual access requests to establish that users are authorized to access sensitive data and do not receive more access than they need to complete their tasks.
Gaps in IAM frameworks allow bad actors, phishers, and hackers to exploit a company’s lax access management policies to steal sensitive data. In dispersed, hybrid cloud environments that include on-site hardware, off-site IT management, remote workers, and more, regulating network access to detect unauthorized users is a complex task.
Modern IAM systems both authorize and authenticate users to assure that those with access to company data are who they say they are and have permission to access that data.
Companies pay nearly $4.9 million on average for every data breach, and most data breaches result from users with unauthorized access to the company’s network.
Therefore, IAM has become centralized as a company’s first line of defense against data security breaches in the modern day.
What is Data Security Compliance?
Preventing these breaches is the first step toward maintaining data security compliance, which companies must manage to remain operational. The regulations that govern the standards of compliance may differ by industry and location, but they often include:
- Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
- Payment Card Industry Data Standard (PCI-DSS)
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
- California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)
- Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA)
- Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX)
- Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)
These regulations dictate how businesses must manage data access, notify users of breaches, and protect their organizations from data threats. Data governance and privacy management are subsections of the broader concept of modern IAM, which businesses must master to meet data security standards.
What are the Costs of Non-Compliance?
Businesses that fail to maintain regulatory compliance in IAM systems may face various penalties. The statutes listed above that dictate the metrics for compliance also dictate the price of non-compliance, which can include fines, legal penalties, litigation, and lost employee and customer trust.
Complex regulations govern compliance for modern institutions. Yet, modern IAM strategies offer versatile solutions for the latest threats that account for regulatory compliance in all relevant standards.
The Benefits of IAM Systems in Maintaining Regulatory Compliance
The compliance regulations listed above cover a wide range of industries and practices. For example, the PCI-DSS governs how user IDs must be generated and managed when processing customers’ payment data, while HIPAA applies specifically to health data records.
Maintaining compliance with all relevant regulations has become a task too complex for conventional data access workflows. IAM systems automate difficult administrative tasks while providing a centralized framework for data governance that gives business owners complete visibility of their company’s IAM workflow.
Let’s examine the real-world example of a company experiencing a data breach. Regulations state that users on that company’s system, including employees and customers, must be notified of the breach. This allows individuals to take necessary precautions to prevent further attacks and identity theft.
IAM systems offer centralized security workflow management, allowing businesses to detect breaches and inform vulnerable users more quickly, reducing the possibility of costly data theft.
Streamlined IAM system features such as identity authorization, authentication, customized privileges, and performance analytics offer business managers more visibility and control over their network’s users.
This allows them to continue meeting regulatory guidelines for data governance even while scaling their operations and keeping up with changing industry standards.
Contact an Experienced Cybersecurity Team to Optimize Your Security Compliance
Maintaining compliance with data regulations is a complex, labor-intensive task for modern businesses of any size. Identity & access management systems provide centralized data resources for managers to maintain security workflow visibility and data governance standards across multiple locations and work models.
Advantage.Tech offers managed IT, cybersecurity systems, and consulting services for over 800 clients across numerous industries. Since phishers and bad actors have gained new methods to bypass conventional corporate security systems, organizations must respond with greater security advances to protect their sensitive data networks.
Contact us today to learn how advanced IAM systems can protect your valuable user data from the latest threats and maintain compliance with all relevant regulations.
