Policy Compliance Management

What is policy and compliance management?

Policy and compliance management is an approach to centrally manage standards, policies, and internal control processes cross-mapped to external regulatory standards. It serves as an integration point for importing regulatory compliance frameworks.

Businesses adopt policy and compliance management software to obtain a structured workflow for identification, assessment, and continuous monitoring of control activities. Companies operating across the globe or in a specific region need to comply with the regulatory requirements specific to their location and business. Policy and compliance management solutions bring all controls together to ensure that organizations don’t miss out on complying with multiple standards due to slight differences.

Logiciel Policy Compliance Management

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Benefits of policy and compliance management

Effective policy and compliance management mitigates the risk associated with managing several compliance requirements and establishing internal controls to fulfill those requirements.

• Minimizes business risks: Policy and compliance management integrates several business processes with the help of a unified software solution. It serves as a central repository for managing a business’ critical information and applications, enabling security professionals to detect threats and mitigate business risks if they find any anomalies or compliance violations.

• Ensures security: Policy and compliance management solutions come with solid authentication protocols, ensuring the security of vital assets and preventing them from malicious hackers.

• Assesses risk in multiple areas: Policy and compliance management enables teams to conduct a proper risk assessment in all governance risk and compliance (GRC) functional areas. The approach facilitates internal audits, quality assurance, competency and maintains risk registers, regulatory compliance, and reputation.

• Maps requirements with controls: With policy and compliance management, every change in requirement can be cross-mapped to controls that fulfill those requirements. When the requirements change, control reflects this in an effective policy and compliance management process. It helps ensure seamless management of various regulatory standards, helping compliance officers prioritize more business-critical functions.

Essential elements of policy and compliance management

The policy and compliance management process contains a few important components designed to make an organization’s administrative tasks more manageable.

• Compliance program: Businesses need to have a well-defined compliance program to accommodate every legal requirement essential to do business in a specific region. Policy and compliance management entails policies and processes and involves training, monitoring, and implementing corrective actions to provide an effective compliance program.

• Centralized repository of policies and compliances:  Maintaining a centralized system for identifying, assessing, and monitoring internal policies and compliances serve as a single source of truth for businesses to manage their policies and prove compliance.

• Version control of policy revisions and approval: For every change in the policy, businesses need to notify their employees and be transparent about it. Policy and compliance management enables companies to communicate every revision effectively. It also takes care of the approval process of any policy changes before they’re published.

• Tracking and reporting: A policy and compliance management process includes tracking every policy revision with details on who received, reviewed, and attested any change to the policy. It proves compliance and reduces liability.

• Compliance maturity: Any change in compliance requirements needs businesses to modify their control objectives to comply with the revision. With policies and compliance management solutions, companies can effectively alter the entities that prove compliance through indicator templates, test templates, and attestations to demonstrate the level of compliance. 

Policy and compliance management best practices

Organizations can adopt the following best practices to ensure effective policy and compliance management:

• Leverage policy and compliance management software to automate processes in advanced management programs.
• Be proactive, not reactive, with reviewing policy changes and making necessary updates before issues arise.
• Set a standard procedure for creating and distributing new policies to employees and to get their attestation. 
• Make policy and compliance management a cross-functional responsibility and involve different departments in policy reviews.
• Limit the decision-making authority to management, with the board playing an advisory role. Organizations can make exceptions in making decisions involving higher risks or the code of conduct.
• Set an escalation policy to clarify the details of what can be escalated, to whom, and the time frame associated with it.
• Instead of jumping straight to compliance requirements, businesses should work their way back from the expected end results. It involves examining goals, identifying precise objectives, and setting clear metrics to track how effectively compliance is being achieved.
• Understand the compliance regulations clearly and oversee internal controls.
• Establish a baseline of the business’ current compliance efforts and conduct audits to check the efficacy of an organization’s policy and compliance management program.
• Develop an ongoing compliance training schedule instead of a one-day workshop. Businesses need to train their employees for every policy change, and ongoing compliance training helps accommodate it.
• Ensure policies and compliance reviews happen regularly. Set reminders to conduct these reviews periodically rather than in response to violations.