What You Should Know About Compliance Reporting; Cloud Compliance ?

From $313 billion in 2020, it is predicted that global spending on cloud services would increase to $482 billion in 2022. Additionally, the market's value will surpass $1,250 billion by 2028.

As more businesses use the cloud to boost time-to-market, cut costs, and increase organisational agility and resilience, it stands to reason that they would be interested in learning more about compliance reporting and cloud compliance. Some of these queries and worries are addressed in this short article.

Does Cloud Compliance Matter?

Many industry rules and regional/national laws have recently been developed to protect customer privacy and data security. Simply put, businesses must safeguard the privacy and data of their clients or risk legal repercussions.

Depending on your sector, you might need to abide by rules and laws like HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOX, or GDPR. Your workflows, procedures, and systems must all be in compliance with the rules established by these regulatory frameworks. You must make sure that any data you store in your cloud infrastructure complies with all applicable data protection and privacy laws because you must keep in mind that this requirement for compliance also applies to the cloud.

Non-compliance can result in very expensive consequences. You may even wind up losing your reputation and your customers, which will have an effect on your revenues and profitability. In addition to dealing with steep fines and even lawsuits.

In conclusion, sure, compliance is important in the cloud.

How can I become compliant with the cloud?

You must adopt the appropriate security controls in order to adhere to the laws that concern your company. Every regulation has extremely specific guidelines and restrictions on how businesses can gather, store, and use cloud-based data. You should collaborate with the cloud provider to put in place robust controls in order to adhere to these restrictions and guarantee compliance.

With their compliance solutions, resources, audit reports, dashboards, and even security controls, a wide variety of providers can actually help your compliance aims.

You can use these standards to establish controls to secure your cloud and achieve regulatory compliance if you currently utilise standard security frameworks to direct your cybersecurity/information security programme. After putting these controls in place, be crucial to train your staff on how to utilise them appropriately to safeguard data and keep your compliance posture.

In order to assist organisations in becoming compliant with different standards, evaluate existing security postures, and identify and prioritise corrective actions, several third-party businesses also offer compliance reporting and auditing services.

How is Cloud Compliance Measured?

Following the implementation of the required procedures to achieve compliance, you should routinely evaluate your compliance posture. To make sure that you retain compliance, this is essential.

Conducting an internal or external audit is one technique to evaluate compliance. You can improve your compliance posture by using the results of an internal audit or self-evaluation. However, because they are carried out by internal auditors, such audits are subject to bias. It's advisable to hire a neutral third-party auditor to undertake an external audit of your cloud compliance posture in order to produce a completely unbiased report.

Requesting cloud audit reports from providers

We already observed that you must abide by the pertinent data privacy rules if you use the cloud. These laws must also be complied with by your cloud provider. Ask your supplier for a copy of their compliance audit report so you can use it to guide your own compliance goals and procedures.

For instance, request the SOC 2 audit report, which is designed for service firms like cloud providers and is standardised by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). This report demonstrates if the service provider has put in place the security safeguards necessary to meet the five "trust services criteria" established by the AICPA:

 security, availability, confidentiality, processing integrity, and privacy.Simply put, the report demonstrates whether the provider has implemented the proper safeguards to protect customer privacy and data security.

The SOC 2 type 1 report A displays the current state and applicability of the provider's controls. A type 2 report illustrates how well these controls have worked in practise over a specific time frame. Ask for the SOC 3 report instead, which is meant to be a general-use report but can still help you evaluate the provider's compliance posture if the provider is unable or unable to share these reports with you, perhaps because they contain sensitive information.

To demonstrate which of its cloud services have achieved compliance with various frameworks like ISO 9001, SOC 1/SOC 2/SOC 3, PCI DSS, etc., some cloud providers, like Oracle, also issue "attestations."