Latest research from Pulsant, a leading UK provider of hybrid cloud solutions, shows a lack of alignment when it comes to managing and maintaining compliance. Almost one in three IT decision makers don’t know which regulatory frameworks their organisations need to align to and 33 per cent see managing IT compliance as a C-level issue.
In addition, IT decision makers identified a number of other challenges in IT compliance, including 40 per cent see maintaining it as a major issue, while 43 per cent say managing it is a problem. Lack of time, budget and skills, were also cited as challenges.
These could be exacerbated by the fact that 39 per cent of respondents in the survey use between 1-3 FTEs each month to deal with IT compliance, with 17 per cent of budgets allocated to the task.
‘Compliance itself is a challenge that nearly every business faces, an endeavour compounded by lack of budget, understanding and resources. And it is not something that’s over once compliance has been reached; maintaining that compliance is another major challenge considering how quickly the market shifts, regulations change and businesses evolve,’ says Javid Khan, chief technology officer of LayerV, a Pulsant company.
The research also showed that 83 per cent of IT decision makers said there was room for improvement when it comes to the tools and technologies used in managing compliance. The most cited added features include real-time alerts, better reporting, open integration with other compliance tools, and more comprehensive monitoring capabilities.
‘One of the telling things in the research is that the same approaches are used for both achieving and maintaining IT compliance, yet challenges remain. This signals the need for a change in approach when it comes to maintaining compliance, whether that means better tools, more automation or working with a partner to manage the entire process,’ Khan explains.
Other findings from the research include that 14 per cent of respondents are still using manual processes to maintain compliance, while 28 per cent of IT decision makers say that negative impact on customer and stakeholder trust is the primary disadvantage of not having an IT compliance programme in place.
The research, commissioned by Pulsant, was conducted by Censuswide to gain a better understanding of the views, attitudes and practices when it comes to IT compliance. A sample of more than 200 IT decision makers, C-level executives and compliance officers, across industries, was interviewed in February 2018.
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