How to Ensure Compliance with Policies and Procedures?

Ensuring compliance with policies and procedures requires a Plan, Do, Check & Act (PDCA) approach to cybersecurity governance:

Establish context for the cybersecurity program by clearly identifying applicable laws, regulations and contractual obligations. This establishes the “must have” and “nice to have” requirements;
Publish appropriate policies and standards to meet applicable requirements for compliance, resiliency and security;
Assign stakeholders accountability for controls (e.g., control owner vs control operator distinctions);
Educate stakeholders on the requirements and expectations on what their business function needs to deliver;
Perform a gap assessment to identify what is in place, as well as what needs to be fixed;
Create a prioritized implementation plan (e.g., plan of action and milestones) to remediate deficiencies; and
Perform continuous monitoring of control implementation to maintain situational awareness and look for improvements to processes, since requirements and scoped environments evolve over time.

Effective compliance reduces risk, improves governance and enhances organizational integrity.