Top 10 Compliance Automation Tools to Consider for 2024

Worked hours on compliance tasks – still not completed?

Most businesses have walked this path several times with a manual compliance management system. Tedious and time-consuming is what manual compliance management means to most teams. The good news is that compliance automation can transform the way compliance management is carried out in your organization. With compliance automation, organizations can align with evolving industry standards and regulations easily, and avoid fines or financial implications if noncompliance. 

What takes about 100+ hours with a manual system, a compliance automation platform can do it in 10-15 hours. Intrigued? Read on to understand compliance automation, the need for automated compliance, and the top 10 compliance automation tools to consider for 2024.

Why Does Compliance Matter?

Compliance means that a company adheres to the applicable laws and rules. The laws are country-specific requirements from regulatory authorities as well as internal company directives.

To implement compliance, several tools and processes may be adopted by the organization. A compliance management system aims at detecting violations or misconduct, preventing and resolving the same at an early stage. Early detection of violations prevents serious consequences that may damage the company’s reputation. 

Compliance also protects an organization from bribery or corruption. In a workplace, compliance also keeps a check on potentially criminal behavior like sexual harassment. Another important area of compliance is preventing financial scandals. In addition to financial and criminal violations, companies will also have to watch out for issues like corporate code of conduct, environmental protection, price fixing, and labor laws. 

Now, coming to the importance of compliance. Compliance is no longer just an option for companies, it is a necessity for operating a business. In the event of violations, business owners are threatened with prosecution and hefty fines. Compliance is important because –

• It helps detect and prevent violations at early stages
• It ensures that the company complies with law at all times
• It protects directors and employees from fines or prosecution
• It ensures that the company’s reputation is upheld
• It enhances the brand appeal to new employees, investors, and business partners

The legal requirements of the business vary depending on the size and business area of the company. The laws and guidelines relevant to the business need to be followed to prevent corruption. The responsibility of maintaining compliance lies with senior management in most cases.

But, in some cases, compliance officers are appointed for implementing compliance within the company. Compliance officers are required to keep themselves up to date with the latest requirements from legislators and regulatory authorities in addition to regularly training employees in areas relevant to compliance. 

Overall, compliance may seem like an extensive job, but it can be simplified with the right compliance automation tools. The following sections focus on what compliance automation is, the need for compliance automation, and the features of compliance automation software. 

What is Compliance Automation?

Simply put, compliance automation is the process of using technology like artificial intelligence (AI), to continually check systems for compliance. Automated compliance can replace manual processes and track all the procedures in one location.

Only when organizations automate compliance can they manage compliance requirements that scale up as the business expands. Compliance automation ensures that compliance activities happen when appropriate, as and when regulatory requirements come along. 

Compliance automation empowers businesses to streamline compliance-related workflows, such as risk assessments, control evaluations, testing, and corrective action planning. The compliance regulations are related to the company’s security frameworks and compliance requirements.

Components of a Compliance Program

Effective compliance requires a streamlined compliance automation program. So, what does a successful compliance program look like? The following elements are part of a successful compliance program. 

1. Testing

Before implementing the compliance program, it needs to be evaluated. Given the importance of compliance in an organization, it is important that the compliance automation software is tested. 

2. Policies and procedures

The compliance policies and procedures must be clear and easy to understand. The basis of the compliance automation system is the policies and procedures, hence, clarity of these procedures is mandatory for the automation software.

3. Software and tools

The tedious and manual tasks in compliance management are effectively automated by compliance automation software. When manual tasks are automated, users can complete compliance-related tasks much more efficiently. 

4. Continuous review

Compliance procedures need to be reviewed regularly, to find ways to improve your processes. A review of compliance performance is important to ensure that the compliance automation platform is performing as expected. 

Why Should You Automate Compliance Management?

One of the significant challenges organizations have to face relates to the large number of clients that a business needs to handle. Compliance automation delivers a set of capabilities that drastically cut down manual work in the IT compliance realm.

Here are 5 reasons why you should automate compliance in a company –

• Continuous compliance – Maintaining compliance is a continuous endeavor. As the number of cloud and people resources grows in the company, compliance becomes more complex. Many tasks related to compliance can be controlled easily with automation, and the controls help you stay compliant at all times. 
• Better compliance with less effort – It is evident from the above discussion that compliance is a labor- and data-intensive process. Manual compliance solutions are not robust enough to meet the demands of scaling compliance requirements. Compliance automation tools can help you get compliant in a shorter time frame. 
• Reduced time for tracking down information – Effective compliance requires a centralized platform that helps manage compliance tasks and documents from one place. This way less time is spent on searching for information across disparate systems, especially when preparing for an audit or implementing a new compliance framework. 
• Minimized duplicative effort as compliance requirements scale up – As business operations scale up, compliance requirements scale up proportionally. Increasing compliance requirements increases the burden on the compliance team, and the incidence of duplicative effort is higher. 
• Integrate multiple systems – Seamless business operations and communication require the integration of disparate productivity tools. Compliance managers business process owners and control operators need to communicate to have complete control over compliance management. Compliance professionals can manage tasks better in a centralized interface using compliance automation software. 

Examples of Regulatory Compliance Automation

Organizations that handle sensitive data must consider compliance automation seriously. Automation can save time and also improve the accuracy of compliance management. To keep up with rapidly changing industry standards and regulations, organizations require automated compliance management systems. 

Internal auditors and senior leadership get real-time updates and accurate statuses of compliance when compliance is automated. For example, in the healthcare industry, the HIPAA regulations are often found evolving. Automated notifications of evolving changes are issued through the compliance automation software to auditors and leadership so that they can align internal policies and tasks with these changes to avoid non-compliance. 

Organizations looking for effective ways to implement a robust information security management system and lower operational costs, must automate their governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) systems. Firms that provide regulatory technology that helps businesses manage their regulatory processes to meet compliance obligations.

As global regulations continue to evolve, the demand for compliance automation increases. Businesses become more aware of how compliance automation can mitigate the risks of fines from regulatory breaches. The COVID-19 pandemic, made it even more difficult for employees to stay on top of regulatory compliance. 

Compliance automation allows organizations to remain compliant and avoid potential penalties or other financial consequences. When the compliance team is freed from menial and repetitive tasks, they get to focus on more sophisticated, intensive compliance tasks like drafting new policies. Compliance automation software enables built-in continuous monitoring and alerting that strengthens the company’s overall security position. 

The essential part of operating a business is to stay aware of compliance obligations. Without the right compliance solution, staying aware of compliance obligations can be challenging and nearly impossible for all your employees, processes, and policies to abide by the endless sets of regulations and requirements. 

What is Compliance Automation Software?

By automating time-consuming manual compliance procedures, compliance automation software keeps track of the company’s internal systems and controls to verify conformity with the industry standards and regulations. Many compliance management software solutions enable continuous monitoring.

Simplify evidence collection across multiple frameworks, and provide user-friendly integrations. Best compliance software offers built-in content for common standards, such as HIPAA, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard), and National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). 

Compliance management software simplifies the sometimes tricky process of establishing and maintaining compliance considerations with necessary standards and laws. 

How does Automated Compliance Work?

Compliance automation software provides organizations with compliance workflow capabilities like self-assessment, corrective action planning, and control analysis and testing. When these compliance tasks are automated manual spot checks can be avoided.

Compliance monitoring tools are set up as per the security policies of the organization. All the regulations related to the industry to which the company belongs are copied into the automation software to detect violations. This information can change or update the knowledge base of compliance regulations and security standards at any time.

Automation is needed for organizations that process sensitive information or must adhere to stringent rules and regulations for protecting customer data. 

Compliance tools use artificial intelligence, Advanced Analytics, and Machine Learning technologies for encrypting and protecting specific data types as per regulatory standards. Local, National, and International standards can be loaded into the compliance software, so that data collection, monitoring, and evaluation can be done fast and easily.

The software also flags off any violation as it arises by issuing alerts and notifications to relevant stakeholders. These tools also enable users to track and monitor business compliance roadmap through a single platform. 

Here is how compliance software tools work –

Gathering data – The tool gathers data from a variety of sources such as regulations, policies, procedures, and systems.

Analyzing data – The tool analyzes the data to identify compliance gaps and risks.

Generating reports – The software generates reports that highlight compliance risks and gaps

Providing recommendations – The tool provides recommendations for addressing gaps and risks.

Automating risks – The tool automates tasks like planning, self-assessment, planning and monitoring controls, testing, and reporting. 

Benefits of Using Compliance Automation Software

Automating compliance processes has several benefits for organizations that deal with sensitive data. The key benefits of using compliance automation software are –

• Automated compliance procedures are more time and cost-efficient than manual controls.
• Personnel can access and check compliance status and audit information on a single dashboard.
• Real-time data helps leaders make more informed risk management decisions. The leadership and management can make informed decisions with the help of real-time data on compliance status and risk stance from the central dashboard.
• Automation makes it easier to implement uniform compliance policies across IT environments, including physical servers, private clouds, containers, and public clouds. 
• Automation reduces compliance risks for the organization by avoiding getting stuck with fines for slipping compliance.  
• Continuous verification of compliance requirements, identification of potential vulnerabilities, and management of third-party risks is possible with the automation software.
• Automation minimizes the risk of security breaches and reporting mistakes.
• The accuracy of compliance reporting is greatly improved with compliance automation.

Creating a Compliance Automation Checklist

The first step is to diagnose the security problem. CIOs need to figure out where all the regulation is coming from. Regulations come from a new generation of privacy and data security rules around the world. These rules impose challenging duties of care for the data a company has in its possession. The company is held responsible for third-parties working with that data on the company’s behalf. Data compliance requires continuous monitoring and protection of data, rather than only before audits. 

The second item on the checklist is to use strategic compliance solutions. To achieve better vendor management, you need to establish your regulatory compliance. Better usage of technology leads to better vendor risk management. Integrating technology with other business systems ensures that any changes in operations that might affect internal control are immediately flagged. 

The last item on the checklist is to address challenges along the way. The biggest challenge to revamping security and compliance is defining ownership of the project. Regardless of who leads the project, the challenge will be to identify controls in the business so that they can be mapped to regulatory requirements. Better security assessments are not part of a compliance exercise, rather a fundamental part of vendor risk management.

Top 10 Compliance Automation Tools for 2024

Compliance automation is a must for businesses looking to improve existing processes and mitigate business risks. Getting compliant is a way to show that you are serious about security and privacy, and have systems and processes in place to ensure 100% compliance. Choosing the right compliance automation solution holds the key to successful compliance automation. We have curated a list of the top 10 compliance automation platforms to consider for 2024.

This is a comprehensive list that evaluates each software for its key features, and pros and cons. 

1. Cflow

Cflow is a no-code workflow automation software that can be used to automate compliance management. This workflow automation software deploys SLAs and escalations to ensure that employees deliver what is expected of them promptly. Setting SLAs for specific job roles no longer needs to be done manually, you can simply set specific job roles, and tasks, and assign a timeline in the Cflow workflow management platform.

The automated process makes it simple and delivers a set of instructions to all employees in the same class. Creating rules in Cflow is easy and simple, and ensures that businesses never fall out of compliance. Employees receive reminder notifications well before the deadline and when a breach occurs. Escalations keep stakeholders informed of pending and overdue tasks and help manage expectations. 

Pros

• Cflow allows you to track all compliance activities in one place with an intuitive dashboard.
• Pre-built templates in Cflow let you create custom workflows according to your organizational requirements.
• Cflow can be integrated with more than 1000 apps for seamless communication

Cons 

• There aren’t any notable cons of Cflow.

2. Scrut Automation

Scrut Automation is a risk-first smart governance, risk and compliance (GRC) platform. This software ends the tedious process of manually getting compliant. You can save up to 20 hours of effort in scoping with Scrut. This software combines automation and workflow management to connect your cloud service providers and 3P applications for automating evidence gathering and flagging deviations as they occur. This compliance automation software provides a single source of truth for compliance for tracking all compliance activities in one place. 

Pros 

• Scrut offers the lowest total cost of ownership and the fastest time to value. 
• You won’t need to work with external consultants for penetration testing, you can simply work with our network of testers for a seamless experience. 
• The structured customer success program ensures implementation happens in the lowest-touch manner in the industry.

Cons

• The evidence collection process in Scrut needs to be more streamlined. 
• Cloud detection needs improvement to handle instances that require multiple scans to flag issues

3. Drata

This compliance automation software puts security and compliance in autopilot. This is a security and compliance automation platform that monitors and collects security controls. It streamlines compliance management by automating compliance monitoring, evidence collection, asset tracking, etc. Data gives you visibility into your security position, compliance status, and control across the organization. 

Pros 

• The setup process is extremely simple
• Comprehensive documentation helps users get familiar with various topics
• The software provides centralized visibility of all personnel and assets
• Provides insights into what compliance requirements need your attention

Cons

• Insufficient custom integrations with other systems
• Some integrations like GCP, and Checkr don’t work properly
• The inability to customize what to monitor is challenging for the engineering team

4. Hyperproof

Hyperproof is a security assurance and compliance operations platform that brings efficiency to your compliance and risk management process. This automation software empowers the organization to comply with regulatory requirements by helping with organizing, standardizing, and automating compliance-related work. This tool provides an end-to-end solution that helps organizations understand compliance requirements, manage internal controls, and defining audit processes and workflows. 

Pros

• This software provides role-based access management that ensures users have access only to their tasks and are focused on what they should be
• Easily integrates with multiple tools and automates evidence collection
• Simplifies task management with the use of a Kanban board or simple grid

Cons

• Inability to customize and configure notifications
• The system stops functioning occasionally, requiring a refresh to work again

5. Audit Board

This is a cloud-based audit, risk, and compliance management platform that helps comply with PCI DSS, NIST, CMMC, SOC 2, ISO 2700x, and more. All the compliance frameworks are centralized by the Audit Board for reducing manual effort, avoid duplicative assessments, and streamline reporting with automation. The software identifies the compliance gaps between your organization and industry standards to ensure that the organization stays compliant with changing requirements. 

Pros 

• Central hub for all risks and controls
• Easy implementation and customizable as per your needs

Cons

• Lacks the ability to manage third-party risk management
• Setting up new controls, and processes is confusing in this automation software

6. Logic Gate

This is a GRC platform that converts risks into opportunities. The LogicGate Risk Cloud Platform allows businesses to manage and improve governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) program with ease.

This compliance automation software proactively tracks and responds to issues and provides insights. The entire compliance lifecycle, from identifying the right rules to keeping tabs on the effectiveness of your compliance programs, can be handled easily with Logic Gate. 

Pros

• This is a highly customizable platform that does not require any technical background. 
• Provides in-depth training on using the platform and getting compliant for admins

Cons 

• Does not provide options for bulk changes
• The learning curve is steep requiring employees to spend too much time in training

7. Sprinto

This is a compliance automation tool that helps companies automate information security compliances and privacy laws, which include, SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, GDPR, and PCI DSS. With Sprinto, security documents can be easily created and enable real-time centralized monitoring. The audit requirements and evidence-gathering tasks are automatically mapped to your work. Sprinto generates downstream tasks around background checks, security training, policy acknowledgments, and access control, and tracks them to completion. 

Pros

• Enables real-time evidence tracking
• Provides a clean and easy to understand and navigate interface

Cons

• Missing information in the knowledge base can be provided only by the support team
• Monitoring and fetching data is time-consuming

8. Vanta

You can automate compliance and simplify security with Vanta. This is an automated security and compliance management platform that helps organizations stay compliant by monitoring, improving security status, and adhering to SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, etc. Reports generated by Vanta allow you to avoid repetitive tasks and provide customized reports. It integrates with cloud service providers, identify providers, task trackers, and many more to automatically collect evidence. 

Pros

• Provides a large library for pre-built policies and process templates
• Enables easy sharing of audit access with auditors directly on the platform

Cons

• The built-in risk assessments are not detailed
• The setup process is tedious and time-consuming
• The platform does not support Checkr International which causes failed tests for international employees

9. Laika

Laika helps companies manage every facet of compliance from a centralized space. This is a compliance platform that helps organizations of all sizes obtain InfoSec certifications and stay compliant with regulations like HIPAA and GDPR. A centralized dashboard helps track the compliance process and streamlines the auditing process. Laika helps in automated vendor discovery and assesses current compliance policies and practices. Relevant personnel are sent notifications whenever human intervention is required. 

Pros

• The policy management system is the source of truth for all the company’s policies
• The centralized dashboard makes it super easy to know the status of task compliance
• Alerts and notifications let relevant personnel know when human intervention is needed

Cons

• Some of the features are a bit unstable at times
• Glitches in the software make the process slow

10. Secureframe

Secureframe helps companies in compliance frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, GDPR, HIPAA, and CCPA. Compliance is a continuous process, Secureframe helps organizations remain compliant and issue alerts and reports when deviations or violence occurs. Secureframe automates most of the compliance process as per business requirements with a streamlined compliance workflow. This automation platform integrates with several service providers to help you stay compliant and make you audit-ready. 

Pros

• Policy builder in Secureframe saves a lot of time
• Supports a good number of integrations

Cons

• Incidents of false notifications occur sometimes
• Several processes require manual work that can be automated

Conclusion

Compliance management can be as simple or as complex as the compliance automation system that is implemented. The right compliance software can streamline all of the business processes to ensure that the organization is fully compliant, with just a click of a button.

A scalable and flexible compliance automation software like Cflow can step up the compliance management capabilities by several notches. Compliance workflows can be built within minutes with the visual workflow builder in Cflow.

Interested in knowing how Cflow can improve compliance management capabilities in your organization? Sign up for the free trial to see Cflow in action.