regulatory compliance, A Reminder On Why Regulatory Compliance Is So Important

A Reminder On Why Regulatory Compliance Is So Important

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Regulatory compliance isn’t a matter to brush off lightly. These laws and requirements are put in place to not only protect your business, but also your customers. As a quick reminder, three of the main players in regulatory compliance are:

HIPAA – HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act. This act, established in 1996, affects organizations that handle health information (PHI) or personal health records (PHR). Such organizations include clinics, hospitals, nursing homes, psychologists, dentists, and pharmacies. These regulations protect the rights of patient authorization and who can view personal health information.

SOX – The Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act is a US federal law that was established in 2002 in response to a number of major corporate and accounting scandals. Some of the organizations involved in these scandals were Enron, Tyco International, and WorldCom. This law addresses how to handle corporate governance, auditing, and financial reporting so that those scandals never happen again.

PCI – The payment card industry (PCI) is established to protect our card information. Credit card companies such as Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover abide by a set of data security standards (PCI DSS) that aim to reduce payment card fraud and theft.

What Happens If You Ignore Regulatory Compliance Regulations

As you can tell, regulatory compliance requirements protect very important and sensitive data. Failing to follow the rules and regulations set out can result in some very severe punishments, such as large fines and even jail time. For example, failure to adhere to SOX Compliance can result in a fine of more than $10 million and 30 years in jail.

Falling out of regulatory compliance will also damage your enterprise’s reputation and cause your clients to lose faith in you. The accounting scandals of 2002 caused the whole nation to lose trust in accounting and reporting practices. Also, let’s look at PCI compliance. If your personal credit card and financial information wasn’t protected and was left at the risk of being stolen, used, and manipulated, would you really continue to trust your information with its current protector?

The answer is no. It’s not easy to entrust your classified data and personal property to someone new. Regulatory compliance standards, however, give users the comfort and confidence to do just that.

Allowing Cognoscape to properly maintain and uphold your compliance will ensure security on all ends. We are always keeping up with the laws and staying up to date on any changes that occur.

Have any questions? Click here to read our eBook on the science behind regulatory compliance.