Amy Heng
If the proverb is, it takes a village to raise a child, then the corollary in the business world is that it takes a village to get compliance right. And in this analogy, compliance officers are the mayor of this village. Compliance officers schedule audits, coordinate activities, oversee processes, and manage documentation. They are the often-unsung heroes whose work acts as the foundation of your customers’ trust, helping you achieve certifications and mitigate risk.
While your red teamers and defenders get visibility because they sit at the frontlines, your compliance team members are strategizing and carving paths to reduce risk and enable programs. For this National Compliance Officer Day, we salute these mayors of the compliance village in their own words.
Feeling Gratitude
There is a great amount of pride when compliance officers are able to help you build trust with your customers, but there is also an immense amount of gratitude from the compliance teams for the internal relationships built within the enterprise
Yasmine Abdillahi, Executive Director of Security Risk and Compliance and Business Information Security Officer at Comcast, expressed gratitude for executive leader Sudhanshu Kairab whose ability to grasp the core business fundamentals have allowed Comcast to implement robust compliance frameworks that mitigate risks and support growth and trust.
“[Sudhanshu] consistently demonstrates a keen awareness of industry trends, enabling us to stay ahead of emerging challenges and opportunities. His ability to sustain and nurture a strong network, both internally and externally, has proven invaluable in fostering collaboration and ensuring we remain at the forefront of GRC best practices. His multifaceted approach to leadership has not only strengthened our risk posture but has also positioned our GRC function as a key driver of innovation and business growth.”
Compliance professionals rely on their strategic internal business partners to succeed. When enterprise leaders empower the GRC function, compliance and risk managers can blossom into their best business enabling selves.
In return, compliance leaders allow the enterprise to provide customers with the assurance they need. In today’s “trust but verify” world, customers trust the business when the compliance function can verify the enterprise security posture.
Collaboration, Communication, and Education
At its core, your compliance team acts as the communications glue that binds together the various cybersecurity functions.
For Tom Schneider, who is a part of the DataBee team as a Cybersecurity GRC Professional Services Consultant, communication has been essential to his career. When working to achieve compliance with a control, communicating clearly and specifically is critical, especially when cybersecurity is not someone’s main responsibility. Clear communication educates both sides of the compliance equation.
“Throughout my career, I have learned from the many people I’ve worked with. They have included management, internal and external customers, and auditors. I’ve learned from coworkers that were experts in some specific technology or process, such as vulnerability management or identity management, as well as from people on the business side and how things appear from their perspective.”
GRC’s cross-functional nature makes compliance leaders some of the enterprise’s most impactful teachers and learners. Compliance officers collaborate across different functions - security, IT, and senior leadership. As they learn from their internal partners, they, in turn, educate others.
Compliance officers are so much more than the controls they document and the checklists they review. They facilitate collaboration because they can communicate needs and build a shared language.
Compliance Officers: Keeping It All Together
A compliance officer’s role in your organization goes far beyond their job descriptions. They are cross-functional facilitators, mentors, learners, leaders, enablers, and reviewers. They are the ones who double check the organization’s cybersecurity work. Every day, they work quietly in the background, but for one day every year, we have the opportunity to let them know how important they are to the business.
DataBee from Comcast Technology Solutions gives your compliance officer a way to keep their compliance and business data together so they can communicate more effectively and efficiently. Our security data fabric empowers all three lines of defense - operational managers, risk management, and internal audit - so they can leave behind spreadsheets and point-in-time compliance reporting relics of the past. By leveraging the full power of your organization’s data, compliance officers can implement continuous controls monitoring (CCM) with accurate compliance dashboard and reports for measuring risk and reviewing controls’ effectiveness.
From our Comcast compliance team to yours, thank you for all you do. We see you and appreciate you - today and every day.
