Compliance

About Compliance

Compliance means conforming to a rule, such as a specification, policy, standard or law. Regulatory compliance describes the goal that organizations aspire to achieve in their efforts to ensure that they are aware of and take steps to comply with relevant laws, policies, and regulations.

A compliance audit is a process of comprehensive reviews that focus on an organization’s commitment to a set of regulatory guidelines or its adherence to a specific contract or terms of agreement

Compliance among different fields

Regulations and accrediting organizations vary among fields, with examples such as PCI-DSS and GLBA in the financial industry, FISMA for U.S. federal agencies, HACCP for the food and beverage industry, and the Joint Commission and HIPAA in healthcare. In some cases other compliance frameworks (such as COBIT) or even standards (NIST) inform on how to comply with regulations.

Some organizations keep compliance data which can be used for the purpose of validating compliance in a separate store for meeting reporting requirements.