Cybersecurity compliance is broken. And it has been for a long time.
Despite the world spending more on cybersecurity every year, statistics on compromised data continue to grow. And, even as security vendors and providers deliver more solutions to market, the negative impact from cyberattacks keeps rising. Globally, there was a 141% jump in the number of records stolen in 2020 – reaching a total of 37 billion, as cybercriminals targeted more diverse data sources to sell and to use for extortion. Among the most pursued nations, the U.S. ranks the highest in average total cost of a data breach at $9.44 million.
Good cyber hygiene is essential, especially for those companies that work with sensitive and classified data. The CMMC program was built to enforce security measures to combat emerging threats, and CMMC 2.0 aims to increase accountability, while lowering barriers to comply with perpetually evolving cybersecurity compliance requirements.
Still, the onslaught of threat management challenges will continue to get worse and more complex for companies to manage. The growing cadence of high profile lawsuits charging companies with false security posture claims serves as a reminder that hope is not a strategy, and neither are traditional, paper-based approaches. It’s time to challenge the status quo, now, before legacy cybersecurity processes become an inherent risk.
Why do companies continue to struggle with compliance?
The answer lies in the deep misalignment between compliance, security, and risk. The interconnected and interdependent nature of today’s digital economy creates complex matrices of cascading and overlapping risk exposures whose scale and impact run the gamut from local to regional to industry vertical to national.
By more strictly enforcing the safeguarding of sensitive information such as US Federal Contract Information (FCI) and Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI), CMMC 2.0 furthers the crucial initiative of bringing compliance and cybersecurity to a point of convergence.
When compliance, security, and risk are treated as siloed initiatives, they fail to achieve their common goal of true cybersecurity.
With CMMC 2.0, DOD contractors will now be expected to demonstrate evidence of their compliance in real time. Never has there been a better time for business executives, CISOs, and compliance leaders to rethink their approach to compliance in a way that both improves efficiency, as well as the enterprise’s overall cybersecurity posture.
If you agree that cybersecurity compliance is broken, and that we must do something about it now, you’ll want to dive into our new paper Rethinking Compliance and consider a demo with a member of our team to learn more about Qmulos, the only always-on cybersecurity compliance platform.
