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Strengthen Cyber Governance to Mitigate Regulatory Risks and Enhance Compliance, ETCISO
Cybersecurity leaders face a rapidly evolving landscape as new regulations emerge at an unprecedented pace. This surge presents both a challenge and an opportunity. Rather than responding to each change in a reactive and uncoordinated manner, cybersecurity teams must position themselves as enablers and proactively formalize their role in compliance.
Gartner predicts that by 2029, organizations failing to clearly define and formalize their cybersecurity team’s role in compliance will face 50% more fines due to recurring gaps in regulatory alignment. This underscores the importance of proactive governance today.
By enhancing governance, streamlining documentation and aligning practices with industry standards, teams can meet new requirements efficiently while maintaining daily operations. Eliminating redundant or conflicting requirements boosts visibility and ensures sustainable compliance across the organization.
Focusing on a few key actions will help cybersecurity teams anticipate new expectations and guide their organizations through regulatory change with confidence.
Step 1: Define and Formalize the Cybersecurity Role to Prevent Compliance Confusion
Cybersecurity leaders are often assumed to own end-to-end responsibility for regulations with a strong cybersecurity focus. This misconception can lead to underestimating the resources and budget needed for cybersecurity, while also overlooking other critical roles across the organization. Ambiguity around accountability not only creates confusion but also increases the risk of compliance gaps and reduces overall effectiveness.
To address this, cybersecurity leaders must make their team’s compliance responsibilities explicit in a formal cybersecurity charter. The charter should clearly outline key compliance tasks triggered by any regulation with cybersecurity requirements such as tracking regulations, defining requirements, assessing gaps, remediating issues and ongoing monitoring.
By defining these responsibilities in the charter and considering each phase of compliance, security leaders ensure clarity of executive support and empower their team to engage other stakeholders effectively. For example:
- During regulation intake, cybersecurity provides expert input on the cybersecurity impact of new regulations but does not own legal or compliance analysis.
- In requirements definition and assessment phases, cybersecurity collaborates closely with legal teams to translate obligations into actionable security measures.
- For remediation efforts, cybersecurity leads on cybersecurity governance actions and supports technical implementations
- Ongoing monitoring remains firmly within the purview of cybersecurity.
The cybersecurity team’s role remains consistent across any regulation comprising cybersecurity requirements. The only exception is during remediation, where level of responsibility depends on the nature of the gap to be addressed. Implementing a RACI (responsible, accountable, supporting, consulted and informed) matrix can further clarify roles across your program, helping eliminate ambiguity while supporting sustainable regulatory alignment.Step 2: Enable Agile Adaptation with a Consistent Policy Hierarchy
A well-structured and consistent cybersecurity documentation framework is essential for adapting quickly to new regulatory requirements. Clear documentation not only accelerates response to change but also strengthens stakeholder adherence, enhances implementation effectiveness and prevents conflicting requirements that can lead to compliance or audit issues. Achieving this requires three key actions:
- Structure Every Level of the Policy Hierarchy
Ensure that the policy hierarchy including charter, policies, standards and processes, follows a unified structure of why, what and how. Each layer should serve its distinct purpose with the appropriate level of detail. Clarity at every level reduces confusion and mitigates compliance risk. - Map Dependencies with a Cybersecurity Governance Policy Tree
Develop a visual map connecting policies, standards and procedures to quickly identify which documents require updates when regulations change. This approach helps prevent conflicting requirements while exposing gaps or duplications in documentation, thereby supporting robust compliance. - Make Policies More Flexible
Centralize the definition of security requirements while decentralizing control implementation whenever possible. Allowing business units or application owners to select their own solutions such as choosing multifactor authentication methods instead of a mandatory single method, encourages engagement and adherence, resulting in smoother compliance across the organization.
Step 3: Stay Ahead by Assessing Against Industry-Recognized Frameworks
Periodic assessment of security practices against globally recognized frameworks, such as ISO 27001, NIST CSF and NIST 800-53, helps organizations identify gaps before new regulations and enforcement deadlines reveal them. Many emerging regulations closely align with these standards, allowing for early detection of compliance issues and the establishment of a strong baseline.
Regulators frequently publish official mappings between their requirements and industry frameworks, making it easier to understand and evaluate compliance obligations. Using these resources streamlines the assessment process, supports informed decision-making and ensures readiness for future regulatory changes.
Gartner analysts will be discussing the key strategies, technology and trends related to security at the Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit, taking place March 9-10 in Mumbai, India.
The author is Pedro Pablo Perea de Duenas, Sr Principal Analyst at Gartner.
Disclaimer: The views expressed are solely of the author and ETCISO does not necessarily subscribe to it. ETCISO shall not be responsible for any damage caused to any person/organization directly or indirectly.
