Is Your Business IT Compliant? Find Out Here!

Is Your Business Compliant from an IT perspective?

The word “compliance” should already be setting a few alarm bells ringing in your head. If your business is “compliant”, then it means it’s following the rules set out by particular rules or regulations. Often, these rules and regulations are set out by the government or other authoritative business bodies. So if your business isn’t doing very well in the compliance department, then it might be breaking a law or two! And legal action against a business is hardly the healthiest thing for it.

So it should be a priority that your business is compliant, obviously. But there are a lot of areas of your business that you could attach the word “compliance” too. One resultant phrase that comes to mind, for example, is “IT compliance.” This may not be something you’ve actually considered that much. A lot of businesses are well-versed when it comes to keeping financially compliant, as well as compliant with health and safety regulations. But when it comes to computers, a lot of businesses tend to be more lax.

Bad idea! Here are some of the IT compliance issues you need to think about.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002

It’s not the most memorable title for an important business regulation, is it? This is why a lot of people shorten it to ‘SOX’. This was an act passed by Congress that minimizes the fraudulent activity a business can take damage investors with. Remember the Enron scandal? (Or, at least, did you see the film about it?) The SOX Act was created, in no small part, as a response to that!

There are a lot of provisions to the SOX Act. Back when it was created, of course, businesses weren’t quite as tech- or Internet-heavy as they are now. Your IT infrastructure actually needs to be SOX-compliant to ensure that third party information is properly protected.

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard

Yeah, it’s a bit of a mouthful. Heck, even ‘PCI DSS’ is a bit of a mouthful! But PCI DSS is something you should be paying very close attention to. If your business accepts payments using debit or credit cards, then you need to comply with PCI DSS.

A few years ago, this was an issue that mostly affected businesses that accepted payments over the phone. People now rely much less on phones to make purchases – we use computers and smartphones these days. The technology on your end has to be compliant to ensure the protection of both your data and – more importantly! – the customers’. You can look into IT consulting if you’re unsure how compliant your infrastructure is.

HIPPA and HITECH

HIPPA and HITECH? It sounds like some weird robot comedy duo. But if you’re running a health business, then these acronyms are incredibly important to you.

Both of these Acts require you to digitize your medical records and make sure they meet a specific set of privacy and security standards. While the two have distinct features, the regulations of both do tend to intertwine. Make sure you’re compliant with both HIPPA and HITECH!