How startups can best manage their compliance risks

Startups in every sector chase growth and track KPIs that speak to revenue and customer retention to chart their progress. However, compliance management is arguably just as critical to growth. Without proper compliance controls in place, startups risk attracting regulatory fines, data breaches and loss of customer trust.

Compliance management also helps startups stay on top of their ever-growing infrastructure. A mismanaged infrastructure sprawl can become a growth roadblock, with the company not understanding how secure its systems might or might not be.

Modern startups can adopt one of several cyber GRC frameworks to align themselves with industry best practices. Here are a few tasks every startup must prioritize when managing GRC compliance.

Collaborate early and often

Startups are relatively simple to organize in their early days. With employees wearing multiple hats, companies can get away with overlapping department responsibilities. However, this picture changes quickly as the company grows.

With growth comes more scrutiny from customers, boards, and regulators. As startups divide responsibilities, they inadvertently create GRC silos that paint a confusing compliance picture at the organizational level.

For instance, a new department focusing on its workflows might set up custom compliance processes. However, these processes may diverge from organizational practices, leading to confusion and opaque reporting.

Collaboration is the key to avoiding GRC silos. Department heads must work together to align on GRC reporting objectives to ensure the company functions as a smooth unit. This process also standardizes GRC objectives, giving new departments a readymade template to follow.

Adopt continuous monitoring

Compliance management and reviews are usually periodic activities. However, with startup infrastructure and organization changing quickly, a continuous monitoring approach is the right way forward.

Continuous monitoring, through the use of automated GRC tools, ensures a startup is always compliant no matter its growth stage. Continuous monitoring also gives executives a map of growth obstacles. For instance, expanding to a new region might place unbearable strain on data security infrastructure due to existing flaws.

Executives can sidestep these challenges from the get-go, instead of discovering them after expansion and creating compounding problems. Cypago’s cyber GRC automation platform, for example, ensures that growing organizations remain compliant while giving CISOs more time to delve into complex security compliance issues.

Using data integrations with SSO tools, code management libraries, HR platforms and cloud providers, Cypago identifies compliance gaps as they arise – not merely as a static snapshot. The result is a compliance infrastructure that scales with the company and doesn't inhibit growth.

Define roles and access

Startup infrastructure tends to become more complex as the company grows and this complicates identity and access management (IAM), a critical aspect of GRC compliance frameworks.

Identity management and user access governance also play major roles in cloud security. Today’s cyber and compliance teams must go the extra mile and adopt tools that connect disparate systems to implement zero-trust security principles.

Startups in early growth stages typically use endpoint perimeter software to secure their cloud infrastructure. However, these tools cannot keep pace with complex changes. Instead, startups must invest in tools like Meshcloud to solve their multi-cloud security and identity management issues.

Tools like these help startups automate complex access management controls. For instance, when outsourcing material IT work, financial services firms must restrict access to sensitive data based on complex rules while granting tall IDs unrestricted audit rights.

Managing these parameters manually in a complex multi-cloud and tenanted environment leads to an overloaded security team and eventually non-compliance. Automation helps startups secure their infrastructure, no matter the complexity, and keeps them fully compliant at all times.

Test integrations

GRC tools thrive on integrations. After all, they need data from different sources to monitor compliance statuses and flag potential issues. However, as a startup grows, configuration errors might break integrations, leading to a falsely compliant picture.

It’s important to constantly test these integrations to make sure they aren't missing out on valuable data sources. For instance, testing integrations between GRC tools and HRIS systems like Bamboo HR is critical when reviewing user access.

If the HRIS system is not updated or the integration is not working as intended, a startup might maintain access for employees who have left the firm, a major security flaw.

Testing integrations constantly is essential to squeezing the most out of continuous compliance monitoring.

Customize GRC processes

On the surface, GRC protocols seem simple to adopt since frameworks and templates give teams a good idea of how to proceed. However, successful startups understand that templates are just a start.

Every company is unique, and in most situations, it’s a good idea to customize your processes based on your environment. Everything from software to personnel choices hinges on a company's ability to draw from a successful template and customize it.

While adhering to frameworks like NIST 800-171 or ISO 27001 can certainly put you on the path to proper security, their standards are best viewed as starting points for your own policies and practices that take the specifics of your situation into account.

Business continuity is a good example of a GRC process that demands customization. To truly avoid dreaded downtime, companies must choose backup locations and processes that suit them instead of trying to adopt a templated process that is designed to fit as many companies as possible.

Compliance is critical to startup growth

Compliance doesn't often strike startup executives as the first place to look when optimizing for growth. However, it is a critical cog in the picture. While compliance cannot guarantee growth unto itself, lack of compliance can certainly compromise your ability to thrive.

Following the GRC tips in this article will help startups avoid many of the pitfalls that afflict otherwise successful companies, and scale reliably.