The most important thing in brief:
- Responsibility for IT compliance: Compliance with IT compliance is the responsibility of corporate management and may result in personal liability in the event of violations.
- Prerequisite for IT compliance: A complete overview of the IT infrastructure is essential to take appropriate measures to comply with IT compliance.
- Docusnap Support: Docusnap enables automated inventory and documentation of the IT infrastructure, makes it easier to comply with IT compliance requirements and offers a clear competitive advantage.
What is IT compliance?
IT governance describes the management and planning of the entire IT system, with the aim of optimally supporting corporate goals and strategies. One part of IT governance is IT compliance. This deals with compliance with legal, contractual and corporate requirements with a focus on IT processes and infrastructure. Companies are subject to countless national and international laws and standards, such as GDPR, SOX, ITIL, etc.
IT compliance focuses on information security and data protection, among others. In addition to many other points, IT compliance regulates which security standards must be met, for which areas and to what extent documentation is required, and when a data protection officer must be consulted. However, there are also contractual regulations such as license management Part of IT compliance.
Difference between IT compliance and IT security
Although IT compliance and IT security are closely linked, they pursue different goals: While IT security aims to protect systems, data and networks from unauthorized access, manipulation and failures, is IT compliance about ensuring that all legal, contractual and internal requirements are met. IT security is therefore an important component of IT compliance — but compliance also includes organizational and documentary requirements.
Who does IT compliance concern?
A common misconception is that IT compliance is the sole responsibility of the IT department. That is wrong! Due to the constantly growing relevance of IT in companies, it falls under general due diligence. This means that the responsibility lies with corporate management — even though it is common practice for IT compliance to the IT manager or a dedicated IT Compliance Manager to delegate. This is responsible for ensuring that legal, contractual and internal requirements are systematically implemented and regularly reviewed
The three types of IT compliance
IT compliance can be divided into three main categories, each covering different aspects of compliance with regulations and standards in IT:
- Statutory compliance: This form relates to compliance with legal regulations and regulatory requirements, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or industry-specific laws. Companies must ensure that their IT systems and processes comply with these legal requirements in order to avoid legal consequences.
- Contractual compliance: This involves compliance with contractually agreed obligations towards customers, partners or service providers. This may include specific security standards, service level agreements (SLAs), or other contractually defined requirements.
- Internal compliance: This category concerns compliance with internal company policies, standards and procedures. These include, for example, internal IT security guidelines, access regulations or data processing processes, which often go beyond legal requirements and are specifically tailored to the organization.
Effective IT compliance management takes all three areas into account and ensures that legal, contractual and internal requirements are systematically met. Through regular audits, training and the use of appropriate tools, companies can strengthen their compliance and minimize risks.
Consequences of non-compliance
The managing director of a GmbH is personally liable for compliance with legal regulations, including violations of IT compliance requirements. The penalties range from fines to parole and imprisonment.
But the consequences for the company in the event of non-compliance also go far beyond the dreaded fines. If, for example, a violation of data protection is made public, customers usually acknowledge this with an immense loss of reputation and trust. This in turn results in significant sales losses.
This point should not be underestimated under any circumstances, as the effects can be disastrous and particularly noticeable in the long term. It usually takes years and requires enormous effort before the lost trust of customers and business partners can be rebuilt.
In addition, all too lax interpretations and “evasion tactics” of IT compliance, as often reported in the media in recent years, are rated extremely negatively by customers. This can result in a blatant competitive disadvantage.
Requirements for IT compliance
The subject area of IT compliance is very comprehensive and complex. Nevertheless, the basic requirements for compliance with the regulations and requirements can be summarized briefly and simply: Inventory and analysis of the entire IT infrastructure.
This means that only those who have a complete overview of their IT infrastructure and understand the processes can take appropriate measures.
That sounds simple, but it is the most common stumbling block where most implementations fail.
Implementation challenges
As soon as a basic understanding of your own IT infrastructure and associated business processes has been established, you can start planning and implementing targeted IT compliance measures. Although these measures are highly dependent on the respective sub-area of IT compliance, they follow a common basic principle:
Every IT compliance measure requires interventions in existing business processes — and these in turn require adjustments to the IT infrastructure.
This close interdependence makes it clear that the inventory of the IT infrastructure mentioned above should by no means be understood as a one-off task. Rather, it is a continuous process that must be maintained and updated permanently. This is the only way to make well-founded decisions and implement measures effectively — always in line with the latest technology and processes.
Typical challenges in practice:
- Permanent change: Business processes and IT systems are constantly evolving — this requires continuous review and adjustment of compliance measures.
- Legal dynamics: New legal requirements — both at national and international level — require ongoing evaluation and implementation.
- Documentation requirement: The complete documentation of all changes and measures is essential, but presents many companies with major organizational hurdles.
- Timeliness as a prerequisite: Without an up-to-date overview of IT structures and data flows, key requirements — for example for GDPR-compliant processing of personal data — cannot be met.
Probably the biggest stumbling block is the systematic recording and documentation of this continuous change. However, it is the key to legally compliant and future-proof IT compliance.
IT and Compliance: Implementation with Docusnap
Complete overview of all systems, licenses, etc., detailed understanding of all business and IT processes, up-to-date data... this is of course not feasible manually.
For this reason, the Docusnap software was developed. It automatically and repeatedly inventories and documents the entire IT system. With the help of countless ready-made reports, plans and diagrams, complete IT environments can be analyzed quickly and reliably and dependencies of business processes on the IT infrastructure can be precisely determined. Thanks to fully automated and periodic creation, export and distribution, all people involved are always up to date.
Constantly changing legal regulations, security requirements or licensing requirements can be implemented quickly and easily in this way.
Since IT compliance requirements apply equally to all companies and their implementation is mandatory, rapid implementation with Docusnap also provides a clear competitive advantage.
Docusnap in IT compliance practice
AccorHotels Deutschland GmbH has been using Docusnap very successfully for several years in the area of PCI-DSS compliance to secure credit card data. Especially in the very sensitive environment of credit card security, the responsible team must be able to rely on 100 percent correct data. Any variance in data security and access is at the expense of liability obligations. Especially the complexity of the 3-person constellation user who works on this device with that software could not display any software before Docusnap.
PCI-DSS Compliance Project Manager Bianca Daub summarizes this as follows: “The data is always up to date and available at any time. For me, Docusnap is easy to access and extremely reliable. ”
For more information on implementing the PCI-DSS compliance regulations with the help of Docusnap at AccorHotels Deutschland GmbH, please see our latest customer case study.
Conclusion: IT compliance is mandatory
Every company has to deal with IT compliance. Failure to comply can have serious consequences for the company as well as for management. Compliance with the requirements is complex and causes a great deal of effort, costs and stress.
With Docusnap, you get rid of these worries. Automate your IT compliance and gain a competitive advantage.
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