With the number of data breaches and cyberattacks increasing each year, regulatory industries are facing stricter compliance laws and higher demand for data security. Industries such as healthcare, financial services, manufacturers, legal services, and payment processors are now enlisting the assistance of managed service providers to make sure they adhere to compliance laws. A managed service provider (MSP) sets up and manages compliant IT environments.
Staying compliant is an ongoing effort and keeping up with the constant changes can be exceedingly difficult to manage by in-house IT teams alone. Working with an IT managed service provider like Tekscape will ease the burden of keeping up with compliance regulations. We provide your organization with monitoring, security, and tools to avoid regulatory fines and keep your customer’s data safe. Read on to learn how managed service providers help with regulatory compliance.
How Managed Service Providers Help with Regulatory Compliance
Get to know the compliance regulations for the industry you serve
One of the trickiest parts of remaining compliant is adhering to industry specific regulations. Before addressing your company’s compliance needs, identify the rules of your industry. Here are some examples of industries and their current compliance regulations.
Healthcare – Providers must be very mindful of patient privacy measures. Data must be encrypted and most importantly the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) must be abided by.
Manufacturing – Manufacturers have an ever-increasing number of compliance regulations that they must meet. These regulations are especially relevant to manufacturers that are in contract with the Department of Defense. The regulations include Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) and Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC).
Banks and financial – These organizations are subject to different regulations for each state. When adhering to compliance regulations, banks and financial institutions must look up the individual state or country in which they are located.
Payment card industry (PCI) businesses – PCI businesses must adhere to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. They must also meet compliance with their card networks, merchant service providers, and payment service providers. These compliance requirements are often complex and vary with each contract.
Managed service providers monitor for regulation changes
Regulations are consistently changing with the current landscape. This is one of the compliance pieces that businesses have the most trouble with. Many experts compare it to running a triathlon; just when you think you have finished the race, someone moves the finish line or adds another obstacle. Having to worry about the constant changes in regulation can distract business owners from what they really need to be doing, which is running the business. When working with a managed service provider that manages compliance and regulations, the monitoring of changes is all done for you. MSPs keep your business up to the latest industry standards and this is something that your clients and employees can certainly appreciate.
MSPs have compliant infrastructure and tools
When making the decision to hire a managed service provider, you should select one that meets your company’s specific needs for compliance. Some MSPs focus more on security while others specialize in compliance centric cloud infrastructure. Whatever type of compliance you need, MSPs can provide you with the tools, assessments, security, and more to help you remain compliant. They can also create automation processes for maintaining ongoing compliance. One of the most helpful automations MSPs create is automated compliance assessments so there is no need to worry about gaps in your infrastructure. If you want less of a hands-on approach with an MSP, many of them offer consulting if your internal IT team needs assistance with compliance related problems.
MSPs ensure the implementation of correct security measures
Factors like industry, business practices, and region can mean your business is subject to different laws and regulations. A managed service provider can assist in developing a compliance regulation strategy that ensures you have the correct safeguards in place for your specific industry. For example, if your business must adhere to regulatory compliance, an MSP can implement the following:
Security information and event management – This involves collecting, analyzing, and reporting on security related events from sources such as firewalls, intrusion detection, antivirus software and log files. This enables the MSP to detect malicious activity, assess risks, and promptly respond to incidents.
External vulnerability scanning – This assessment tests the weaknesses in your company’s firewall that outsiders can exploit to infiltrate and attack the network.
Endpoint encryption – This scrambles personal data that is stored on devices such as laptops, desktops, and servers. Scrambling the data makes it unreadable to parties who do not possess an encryption key.
About Tekscape
Tekscape is committed to providing proactive, responsive, and timely managed IT services support for our clients. We start with our comprehensive new client onboarding process designed to get your business up-and-running on our monitoring and management tools with as little disruption as possible. For over 15 years, we’ve successfully onboarded simple and complex IT infrastructure supporting multiple users including:
• Servers and Systems
• Networking
• Collaboration (Phone, Video)
• Desktop, Email and Endpoints
• Microsoft Office 365 & Azure
• Security & Disaster Recovery
As your trusted partner, Tekscape becomes your go-to-guide for technology best practices aligned with your industry and your unique business goals. Our technology solutions can help reduce operational costs, eliminate downtime and decrease overall IT spend.
We hope you enjoyed today’s article on how managed service providers help with regulatory compliance. If your business has had problems staying compliant or has experienced data breaches, contact us to discuss how Tekscape can create a secure and compliant environment for your IT infrastructure. We are located in New York City but work with clients all over the United States.
