Stop Treating Compliance Like a Chore—Build a Resilient Security Culture
Mention "cybersecurity compliance" to most people in your organization, and their eyes will probably glaze over. Yet its negative reputation is partly due to how many companies treat compliance. It's often perceived as an annoying check on innovation and growth, so businesses do the least possible to pass and then forget all about it until it's audit time again.
In reality, compliance can achieve the opposite: creating a foundation for enhanced business resilience and success.
If you think compliance is a necessary evil, you haven't found the right framework yet. That's why 2025 should be the year your organization embraces a new approach.
Threats Are Everywhere
Rules and regulations exist for a reason. In the world of cyber risk, it's to ensure that complying organizations have a baseline set of policies and processes that, in theory, will insulate them from serious breaches. That's especially important given that cybersecurity is still not embraced as a part of corporate culture in the way workplace safety is.
Just one peek at the threat landscape will tell you why such rules exist. A vast cybercrime economy worth trillions of dollars provides a readymade market for the trade of hacking tools, know-how, and stolen data. Much of this knowledge is packaged into easy-to-consume services, further lowering the barrier to entry for budding threat actors.
SaaS companies need to be especially careful. Your business may be an attractive target if it manages large volumes of sensitive customer data and has a low tolerance for the kind of service outages that ransomware can cause—which is to say, most companies. State-sponsored attacks are rarer but increasing in volume and aggression, according to Microsoft.
What Are the Most Common Cyber-Threats?
According to research from ISMS.online, which covers the U.S., U.K., and Australia, the top five threats experienced by respondents in 2024 were:
- Malware infections (35%) are increasingly common thanks to pre-packed toolkits.
- Social engineering (32%) could include phishing across email, text, social media, and voice.
- Deepfakes (30%) may trick victims into making corporate money transfers or help fraudsters bypass know-your-customer checks.
- Ransomware (29%) is exploding thanks to the "as-a-service" model.
- Insiders (28%) could be either negligent or malicious.
A dishonorable mention should also go to supply chain threats. Most SaaS firms will sit at the epicenter of a complex web of digital suppliers. They'll also engage with law firms, payroll providers, and other professional services firms. Any of these relationships could be probed by threat actors for weaknesses.
Last year, the number one information security challenge facing our respondents was "managing vendor and third-party risk.”
What This Means for Your Business
Serious security breaches can, of course, lead to significant financial and reputational damage. That's why most SaaS companies must comply with a patchwork of overlapping cybersecurity regulations.
In the U.S., these could include federal laws like the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act (CIRCIA), state-level security and privacy laws, and sector-specific ones like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
In the EU, new regulations include the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), NIS 2, and the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA).
With so many rules and often major fines for non-compliance, the whole thing can seem overwhelming, especially for smaller SaaS providers. Survey respondents cited compliance with diverse regulations as the second-biggest information security challenge.
Why the Old Ways Aren't the Best
Against this backdrop, you could be forgiven for taking a checkbox approach to compliance. It makes sense on paper. Focus on the rules, and only expend enough time, money, and resources to comply: no more.
Yet, it creates a heap of problems in the long run. It's a superficial kind of compliance that generates a false sense of security, narrowing the focus to the point where underlying sources of risk aren't addressed. And because regulators are constantly reacting to changes in the threat and technology landscape, checkbox compliance means you will be, too. That could leave your business exposed to fast-evolving threats.
Out With Checkbox Mindset, In With Business Enablement
As we enter a new year, it's time for a fresh approach—a proactive mindset focused on continuous security and risk management, with compliance treated as a growth enabler. Let's consider two best practice approaches that could help.
ISO 27001 is an internationally renowned standard designed to help organizations structure and simplify information security management. There are three elements to it:
- An Information Security Management System (ISMS) framework helps establish a comprehensive set of policies and procedures for managing information security. This is the foundational element and the key to fostering a proactive compliance culture.
- A risk evaluation process which requires organizations to identify potential threats.
- A set of "Annex A" controls will help ensure the organization's ISMS effectively mitigates risk.
Recognized in over 150 countries, ISO 27001 certification highlights your business as one that is serious about proactive risk management. This can help prevent breaches (and the time and money they absorb), build customer trust, and speed up sales cycles.
The culture of continuous improvement, resilience, and security awareness it promotes is a world away from checkbox compliance.
SOC 2 is not a standard but rather a framework explicitly developed for organizations storing customer data in the cloud. That makes it ideal for SaaS providers, especially in North America, where it benefits from greater awareness than ISO 27001.
SOC 2 covers five "trust" categories—security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. But here's the twist: every organization chooses only the categories applicable to their business and then maps out how to meet the 60-odd requirements in each. Rather than follow a prescriptive list of controls, you get to design the custom policies and processes relevant to your business.
No Time Like the Present
In the end, the benefits of SOC 2 are similar to ISO 27001. Once you've passed the technical audit, SOC 2 compliance will keep your organization safer from serious incidents—preventing financial and reputational damage. It will help to provide existing and prospective customers with robust security assurances, as well as simplify compliance with many of the cybersecurity regulations that are built on the same best practices.
Nobody knows what the coming year will bring. But in a world of chaos and uncertainty, a compliance culture of continuous improvement will help insulate your business from risk today. And equip it to succeed tomorrow.
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