Does any business want to start their day checking in on
their compliance status? Probably not. One or two days without thinking about
compliance might be okay, but those days can add up.
If you're not careful, suddenly you're behind on compliance
planning and your company is staring at an audit coming down the pipeline.
Many businesses mitigate this problem by having a dedicated
IT service provider to handle the day-to-day compliance concerns, but not every
business is so lucky.
If your company is behind on compliance, here are some of
the pitfalls that can affect your work and livelihood.
Audit failures
The simplest (and most damaging) consequence of falling
behind on compliance is failing a compliance audit.
If you fail a compliance audit, depending on the audit and
on your industry, you may be hit with fines or other serious penalties.
When audits come around, the last thing you want is your
business to be behind on compliance.
Loss of contracts
For regulations like CMMC, consistent compliance is a
requirement for lucrative defense subcontracting.
CMMC is a costly regulation, but that high cost is worth it
because of the work that it can open up.
If your business is dependent on this income stream and
suddenly you're no longer in compliance, that's a lot of work you can no longer
do and revenue you can no longer collect.
Compliance failures turn into loss of work very quickly, and
depending on overhead and other charges, put the business at serious risk.
Data breaches
Compliance regulations can seem arbitrary at times, but
they're designed to protect your customers and your data.
When businesses are behind on compliance, it doesn't mean
they're just out of compliance. It also means they have serious data privacy
gaps that attackers can exploit.
Compliance failures mean security failures, and security
failures can mean data breaches.
These breaches cost businesses work, trust, and the ability
to continue operating.
Increased costs down the line
If you're not focusing on compliance now, at some point you
will be. Either because of the more serious consequences discussed or just
because "it's about time", the question of compliance always needs an answer
eventually.
When a business starts considering compliance after months
or years of not, it becomes far more expensive and arduous to get compliant.
Part of this is the retroactive work that needs to be done
with past records, part is the cost, both in labor and money, of changing
processes that have settled in your business.
Since so much of compliance is about the everyday process,
focusing on compliance as soon as possible reduces the amount of bad habits you
and your whole staff will need to unlearn.
Ineffective strategy
When businesses are behind on compliance, they have a
tendency to scramble to make up for lost time.
Depending on the compliance framework, the business
requirements can be complex and difficult to navigate, leading to poor and
non-comprehensive fixes.
When done "DIY", compliance work can create more problems
than solutions as documentation and strategy are not clearly defined. Since so
much of compliance comes down to that documentation and clarity, easy "fixes"
create more trouble than they're worth.
To paraphrase a famous line, the best time to get started on
compliance was a year ago. The second best time is now.
If your business is running behind on compliance and doesn't
want to fall into these traps, schedule a 15-Minute Discovery Call with us
today.
At The Network Doctor, we've spent 40 years serving Santa Clarita businesses in compliance-regulated industries, and our expertise can help you get and stay compliant without the process stalling your business.
