Understanding compliance challenges and how automation can help

Organizations continue to face a rise in compliance mandates, with even more regulatory requirements for data collecting, processing, and reporting. Many compliance-related tasks remain manual and prone to human error. The rise in human error leads to increased cybersecurity breaches and compliance violations. 

CISOs and CROs focused on compliance standards and regulatory compliance face the challenge of companies lowering their operations costs even as compliance workloads and complexity increase. 

AI and ML are touted in boardroom conversations and the media as replacements for manual compliance processes. Organizations such as IBM, Cisco, and Oracle tout tremendous success stories regarding their deployments of AI and ML in cybersecurity defense, software development, and reducing headcount in their various back-office functions. 

Compliance automation, considered the next central entry point within companies of all sizes, continues to make substantial headway in helping risk management and compliance teams meet their mandates while reducing operational expenses. Companies in areas like finance, government, and healthcare that have many rules can also benefit from this. 

Tiebreaker AI is launching IntelVerse, a new platform that helps compliance teams review documents and policies more efficiently and get insights faster. It validates their current posture against updated compliance frameworks and provides a single place for collaboration for the various stakeholders—all in a secured platform. 

Are you interested in learning more about AI automation to assist you in your compliance journey? Click here to schedule your first demo today with the Tiebreaker AI team! 

Common compliance challenges  

Traditionally, compliance management is a manual workflow process, even with the early additions of compliance automation and data collection. Most organizations need help hiring and keeping people with experience in compliance matters across mandates, resulting in hiring contractors or expensive consulting firms to handle much of the preparation and ongoing maintenance. 

Fact: The ability to advance automation powered by AI into the compliance sector will significantly benefit organizations that need to meet more compliance regulations at a lower cost. 

The role of AI and automation for compliance operations management 

The first area of compliance AI automation will significantly reduce manual processes surrounding data collection, policy review against latest compliance mandates, and correlation of telemetry information from the security operations team. AI-powered automation will also be critical in sustaining compliance postures after the monthly, quarterly, and annual mandatory reviews. Between the review cycles, organizations are still required to maintain their compliance readiness; automation will continue to play a critical role with this requirement. 

The second area compliance AI-automation will play within an organization to change documentation once a standard or framework has become updated. Currently, the upkeep of the security policies and compliance reporting artifacts is less of a priority for most organizations. Many organizations focus a good amount of their financial capital and talent on automating incident response and remediation of recently discovered vulnerabilities. Organizations must still invest in proactive compliance automation, even with managed services. 

The third area, compliance AI automation, will provide far more details regarding compliance reports. Organizations, especially in the US, must still file various compliance reports, including very time-sensitive ones, because of a data breach. Compliance automated reporting can quickly query multiple sources. 

“The HIPAA Breach Notification Rule mandates that covered entities and business associates notify after a breach of unsecured protected health information.” 

"The SEC adopted rules mandating registrants to disclose material cybersecurity incidents and annually report on their risk management, strategy, and governance." 

Compliance automation in action 

Automating compliance involves gathering data, organizing it, and ensuring its accuracy. Compliance automation generates even greater value by processing vast amounts of data and identifying possible compliance violations faster than manual workflows. 

Compliance automation helps organizations see very early that their various business actions put them in a vulnerable position. For example, if the organization sees increased login failures into a medical records system or financial services application, this spike could violate its existing access control policy and the HIPAA, NIS2, and DORA compliance mandates. 

Relying on a human review of syslog or data collected within a Security Event Information Management (SIEM) platform takes time and resources. Compliance AI automation quickly processes the data and sends out notifications with high accuracy. The data processed by compliance automation tools also helps provide valuable feeds into real-time dashboards. 

What are the cost savings when using compliance automation? 

Once organizations have fully implemented compliance AI automation, the first area of focus in reducing is the elimination of fines for violations. As an example, in 2023 alone, financial institutions were fined over $6 billion globally. And compliance operations costs continue to rise in several areas, including: Managing regulation complexity and changes HR costs Investment in compliance tools Training for employees working in compliance  Data management, encryption, and backups. In each area, achieving cost reduction is possible by leveraging AI-compliance automation. Investing in compliance automation helps give the organization the tools to reduce manual processes, eliminate duplication of effort by cross-section departments, and reduce the need for human capital resources. Achieving this would help reduce operational expenditures. 

Success in automation use cases 

Several industries that adopted compliance automation quickly recognized a solid return of investment (ROI), return on asset (ROA), and return on effort (ROE). AI compliance automation is becoming increasingly popular within the cybersecurity space, especially when it comes to getting ISO 27001 certified. It augments security teams with routine task automation, such as risk assessment, monitoring, and reporting. Cybersecurity companies and security teams can identify and respond to cyber threats before they become a bigger issue causing financial and reputational losses. Large financials, including banks, continue expanding their compliance automation beyond document review and policy validation. By accessing various compliance artifacts relevant to their work, banks have successfully reduced their time for fraud investigations. Fintech companies have also witnessed greater efficiency leveling AI-compliance automation like traditional financial services firms. Much of compliance fintech focuses on regulating Know Your Customer (KYC). AI automation helps expedite the customer onboarding and transactional review processes required under the Anti-money laundering requirement. Insurance companies gain cost savings and lower human error while leveraging AI automation for regulation reporting and risk assessment, validating their various security policies against updated compliance mandates. The automation workflow alone reduces human error and the costs of hiring third-party reviewers. 

What are the first steps when implementing compliance automation? 

Start small 

Avoid initially enabling AI-automation across every compliance workflow. Focus on 1-2 manual processes that often result in human error. Create a realistic ROI model before expanding into other areas of compliance automation. Track both the cost savings and areas in which compliance operations have expanded. 

Prioritize high-value cost savings initiatives 

Analyze which compliance activities incur the highest costs. Regulatory change management, document review, and security control testing are accessible opportunities for automation. 

Create a continuous improvement culture 

Effective compliance automation only works if the organization supports a continuous improvement workflow. Compliance automation still requires oversight, frequent assessments, and review of the current and future success factors. 

Why Tiebreaker AI? 

AI adoption remains a dynamic journey, with its integration into cybersecurity defenses, Fintech platforms, software development, and compliance automation gaining momentum across organizations. 

By leveraging Tiebreaker AI, leaders like CROs, CISOs, CFOs, and CIOs can significantly reduce compliance costs, streamline content collection and document reviews, and minimize violation risks - making it a smart, strategic choice. 

Need to get ahead of changing compliance mandates while lowering operations costs? Tiebreaker AI should be your next call! Contact the team today to discuss your compliance automation strategy!