Editor’s note: The following is a sponsored blog post from AuditBoard.
The compliance landscape is constantly shifting, and companies are often challenged to meet the requirements of multiple regulations and frameworks. Keeping up with the ever-changing, usually overlapping requirements is a significant burden for most organizations that leads to audit fatigue and frustration for everyone involved. Instead of tackling multiple compliance requirements as independent projects, implementing a single, streamlined compliance framework like the Unified Compliance Framework (UCF) that already accounts for overlapping standards provides a more efficient method for managing multiple requirements.
The Unified Compliance Framework is the largest aggregation of interconnected controls and authoritative compliance documents that links controls across regulations and frameworks. The ability to see the intersections across frameworks allows users to eliminate redundant controls and testing caused by overlapping requirements. The aggregation of general international standards, governmental regulations and industry-specific standards enables a unique view for compliance professionals that highlights the intersections of the various compliance areas. If you are thinking about using the UCF, there are several benefits and challenges you should consider.
5 Considerations for Leveraging the Unified Compliance Framework
Technology-enabled approaches to meeting compliance requirements allow forward-thinking compliance professionals to keep pace with the rapidly evolving compliance landscape. While there are many benefits of using standardized frameworks like the UCF, no standardized framework can be applied automatically without further review. Instead, it is meant to provide a consistent starting point and common understanding of a complex environment. If you are considering the use of a standardized framework, here are five considerations to keep in mind as you plan out your implementation.
1. Structured Content and Comprehensive Guidance
The Unified Compliance Framework allows you to bring in structured content from various standards, frameworks and regulations for those common controls that require implementation. In addition, the UCF provides guidance and considerations when implementing these controls. This allows you to have the comprehensive information needed to implement your controls — all in one place.
2. Cross-Framework Mapping
The UCF’s strength comes from providing one set of recommended common controls that come mapped across standards, frameworks and regulations. Leveraging the UCF common controls allows you to manage your compliance program more efficiently since it identifies the overlap for you. You can save time implementing controls, adding new requirements to your program and performing compliance assessments once to satisfy all the requirements simultaneously.
3. Framework Updates
Frameworks and regulations are updated over time. Keeping up with changes across multiple frameworks and updating your compliance program may take extensive resources, depending on the complexity of your compliance environment. UCF provides updated mappings for new framework versions, allowing you to quickly see only the additional new controls that need to be implemented.
4. Standardized Framework as Guidance, not Authority
While the UCF provides common controls with framework overlap, your organization has to determine how to implement the controls in your environment. Leveraging the UCF provides great efficiencies, but organizations still need to review the mapping in the context of their specific implementation to determine actual compliance. Failing to do so may result in a false assertion about your compliance posture and potentially negatively impact outcomes of external audits or examinations.
5. Framework and Controls Scope
As mentioned earlier, solutions like the UCF are an efficient way to manage the complexities of today’s compliance programs. They do not, however, account for the specific scope of your controls. It is critical for organizations to always review the recommended UCF cross-framework mappings considering the scope of implemented controls (such as systems or locations they apply to) to determine actual compliance and potential gaps. For example, you might have physical access controls implemented for key locations, and you need to add PCI DSS to your environment. The UCF might indicate you already have the required controls in place, but what if they don’t apply to all of your locations — which may have been considered immaterial, but now process credit card data?
When considering the additional complexity of how controls are actually implemented, their scope can become quite complex and difficult to manage without appropriate tools. Compliance management software can help you maintain all the needed information and supporting documentation, and easily report on your actual status of compliance while still maintaining the integrity and benefits of a standardized framework.
After weighing the pros and cons, you can examine the most efficient way to manage your compliance program and decide if solutions like the UCF are right for your organization. Regardless of how well the framework is built, the responsibility to implement, operate and test the control environment is the responsibility of management and cannot be outsourced. Remember that a standardized framework provides a solid baseline, but there is no replacement for management’s insight.
