What regulations am I likely to encounter?State and federal regulations often set rigorous standards for data protection and privacy. Depending on your industry, your IT infrastructure will need to meet these requirements, and Your IT Cloud Backup can help. Most often, regulations govern industries and the way information is kept and transmitted. Some industry-specific regulations include:
- Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Section 404 for Accountants
- PCI DDS Requirements 3, 4, 7, and 9 for Retailers
- Gramm-Leach-Bliley Section 501 (b) for Bankers
- HIPAA’s Security Rules for Medical and Dental Offices
- State Legislation like MA 201 CMR 17 and similar laws
How do these regulations impact data security, storage, backup and recovery?
While these laws govern different industries, all address three common, key items:
- Protection of data from loss/destruction
- Encryption of data over open networks
- Limited physical access to stored data
Regulations prescribe standards for how information is stored, secured, archived and accessed. In some cases, companies are required to maintain records for a period of years and ensure they’re well safeguarded. Working with Your IT Cloud Backup, you can create the IT infrastructure you need to support relevant compliances. Your IT Cloud Backup can be a key part of your overall solution, as it offers a highly secure backup supported by redundant data centers that meets or exceeds regulations regarding protection, encryption and physical access.
What’s my risk if we’re not compliant with industry regulations?
If you fail to comply with relevant regulations, you could face heavy fines and penalties. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is responsible for HIPAA-compliance enforcement. Credit card providers will fine retailers who don’t follow PCI guidelines. The SEC oversees Sarbanes-Oxley, which can carry criminal penalties for violations.
Penalties can be substantial. Several multi-million dollar fines have been issued against healthcare providers and insurers found in violation of HIPAA guidelines. In 2012, the agency started turning its attention to smaller providers; a five-physician practice based in Phoenix was fined $100,000 in 2012 following an investigation that found the practice failed to safeguard patient information and take other security measures. PCI violations can often carry five-figure penalties against small, independent retailers who don’t safeguard consumer credit card data. In short, the risk is substantial and real.
Beyond fines and punitive action, you can face the risk of lawsuit liabilities and the damaging impact to reputation and lost business that negative publicity would inevitably bring.
Will I be compliant if I use Your IT Cloud Backup?
Your IT Cloud Backup is a cloud backup, archiving and recovery solution that automates the processes of securely backing up electronic data and file recovery. It was created with these data protection regulations in mind to satisfy the broad need for a safe, reliable, and cost-effective method of backing up data offsite and allowing full file restoration at any time from any authorized location. Your IT Cloud Backup provides a highly secure solution that can be used to meet or exceed regulatory compliance when scheduling, encryption, and archiving rules align with regulations.
A Network Audit is an intensive diagnostic and planning service designed to check the critical components of your computer network for security, reliability and performance. To make sure your network is running at peak performance and protected from data loss, downtime, viruses and security breaches, this audit should be performed at least once a quarter if you are not having your network regularly monitored and maintained.
By evaluating your network once a quarter and reviewing your future business goals and objectives, we can ensure that one of your most valuable business tools, your network and the information it holds, is performing at peak efficiency and safety. One of our trained engineers will perform this audit, and then alert you to any potential problems they discover. We will then advise you on your options for remedying the situation.
The following components will be audited:
- File servers
- Backup system
- Network infrastructure and configuration
- Workstations, laptops and smart devices
- Foreseeable company growth and expansion
Within each of these components, a plethora of issues will be investigated and any potential problems will be resolved.
Here are the five most important reasons to perform network auditing:
- Vulnerabilities: Using network auditing to assess the security of your systems and identify vulnerabilities is one of the most useful forms of preventative security available to you. These weaknesses can include firewall holes, unapproved services or weak or blank passwords and can be used to assess both workstations and servers. Identifying these issues is the first critical step towards remediating them.
- Patch Management: Network auditing can play a key role in your patch management efforts as well. You and your IT expert at Your It Solutions can use network auditing reports not only to identify systems that need to be patched, but also to confirm that patches are successful.
- Hardware Inventory: Network auditing can help maintain an up-to-date inventory of all the hardware on your network so you know exactly what you have and can therefore enable you to easily make hardware related decisions, such as which systems are getting old and need to be updated to keep up with the ever-increasing workload.
- Software Inventory: Hardware isn’t the only thing that is important to your workstation. Knowing what is running on your workstations and servers is just as important as knowing what hardware is running. How many Macs still need to be upgraded? Who is still running CS4 or hasn’t updated their PDF reader since 2009? Network auditing can give you a clear and complete view into what software is installed on your workstations and servers so you know just what you have and what needs upgrading.
- Compliance: One of the most useful things network auditing can assist you with is your compliance activities. You can quickly and easily ensure that all systems are compliant with your internal policies, and can also be sure that you have licenses for all the software in use on your network. Too often companies find out too late that an open share enabled everyone in the company to install software that was only licensed for one or two users, and have to scramble to upgrade your licensing.
Network auditing may sound like an arduous task, but with the right tools and the right approach, provided by Your IT Solutions, it can be an easy to perform and critical aspect of your network management toolbox.
