Secure compliance made simple with identity security solutions

The regulatory landscape is rapidly evolving, with new technologies and threats heightening cybersecurity and data privacy concerns. Global governing bodies are enforcing stricter compliance measures, emphasising identity-related threats.

In India, the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act signifies a major step toward safeguarding personal data and aligning with global standards. This law underscores India’s commitment to data privacy by mandating robust governance frameworks, timely breach notifications, and strong identity security measures to mitigate risks effectively.

Zero Trust, an approach built on the “never trust, always verify” principle, underpins recent regulatory shifts. Modern identities with extensive permissions often become targets for exploitation, requiring dynamic security. By adopting Zero Trust, organisations can secure identities, manage access, and assess risks continuously through contextual authentication.

Identity security enables Zero Trust by addressing static permissions, rigid access policies, and limited threat detection. With tools enforcing zero standing privileges (ZSP) and just-in-time (JIT) access, organisations can reduce attack surfaces, dynamically manage privileges, and mitigate identity-centric risks. This approach ensures compliance, strengthens security, and adapts to evolving regulatory requirements effectively.

Empowering compliance and audit strategies with identity security

Compliance extends beyond data storage to encompass how data is collected, processed, and used. Today, resilience is a key focus for regulators and boards, emphasising the need to prevent, withstand, and recover from cyberattacks. This intertwines compliance with security, making an integrated strategy and identity security essential for organisational success.

Gaining a tactical edge

Even the most compliant organisations in India are not immune to breaches, compelling forward-thinking security leaders to view compliance as more than a checklist. They treat regulatory mandates as opportunities to implement risk-mitigating controls that not only protect the business but also ensure compliance with evolving regulations.

For example, financial institutions governed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines on cybersecurity and IT risk management insist on robust internal controls. Beyond meeting regulatory expectations, these institutions prioritise identity-centric measures like privileged access management (PAM) to build customer trust. By restricting access to privileged accounts and auditing data changes, these organisations demonstrate their commitment to securing sensitive customer information and ensuring data integrity, critical pillars for building trust and resilience in the digital economy.

Forecasting regulatory shifts

Today, RBI and the National Health Authority (NHA), expect organisations to adopt proactive risk management strategies that go beyond baseline compliance. True proactivity involves not just identifying risks but also mitigating them before they escalate.

Given that any identity, human or machine, can become privileged and exploitative, organisations face the critical challenge of maintaining visibility and control over permissions and entitlements. Identity security provides a unified view of access, enabling organisations to discover, adjust, certify, and revoke access in real time.

For instance, Indian healthcare providers managing a surge of digital identities across interconnected systems leverage identity governance and administration (IGA) to streamline compliance with regulations like the Health Data Management Policy under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM). This ensures robust patient data protection. As business demands accelerate, identity security enables organisations to continuously assess controls, close compliance gaps, and prepare for audit requirements with clarity and confidence.

Strengthening trust in the digital ecosystem

Trust is vital in the digital economy, where a single breach can damage reputation and incur hefty fines. Identity security helps businesses strengthen trust by ensuring transparency, accountability, and responsible data management, enabling compliance with regulations like GDPR while protecting relationships and supporting sustainable growth and transformation.

Redefining Compliance Strategies Through Identity Security

Steering ahead with streamlined automation

Many companies face challenges managing entitlements and compliance with data privacy and cybersecurity regulations. Despite advancements in automation, many still rely on disjointed, manual processes for user onboarding, offboarding, and access management. These outdated methods are inefficient, error-prone, and increase risk by limiting visibility and control.

Identity security solutions address these challenges by automating labor-intensive processes and ensuring accurate, continuous certification of access rights. Acting as a “co-pilot,” these tools leverage contextual data to automate decision-making. Additionally, they simplify reporting with in-depth analytics and audit trails, enabling teams to quickly identify compliance issues and streamline audits with ease.

Staying agile with dynamic controls

Ever changing regulations make static security measures insufficient. Organisations must prioritise dynamic identity security controls, such as adaptive authentication, which adjusts requirements based on specific contexts and responds to threats in real time, ensuring protection in an unpredictable environment.

Staying continuously alert

Continuous compliance demands like ongoing vigilance through monitoring and attestation, are made easier by narrowing the scope of oversight. Identity security solutions enforce least privilege principles in distributed, hybrid IT environments, minimising privileged accounts and risky access. By tightly controlling user actions, organisations reduce attack surfaces, simplify compliance, and gain strategic insights.

Today, adaptability is key. Organisations embracing identity security within a Zero Trust approach can navigate uncertainties, meet compliance requirements, and enhance security. This proactive strategy not only ensures resilience but also strengthens their competitive advantage, enabling them to thrive in dynamic environments.

Written By - Rohan Vaidya, Head India & SAARC Region, CyberArk

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