At Scytale, we’ve long understood that rigorous security compliance isn’t just a check-box exercise – it’s an absolutely essential driver of business growth, customer trust and competitive advantage. This truth is clearly borne out in the findings from our most recent industry survey of 250 compliance leaders across the U.S., Canada and the UK.
The vast majority (85%) of respondents agreed that achieving and maintaining robust security compliance with frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI DSS and others is “very important” or “critical” to attracting new customers and signing more business deals. With increasingly sophisticated cyber threats and data breaches, companies rightly demand assurance that their sensitive data will be kept secure before doing business. Failing to meet stringent data security and compliance standards is essentially a deal-breaker.
The Resource Struggle
However, while the importance of compliance is well understood, our survey reveals that most companies simply lack the necessary resources and capabilities to tackle it effectively through manual methods. An eye-opening 98% of companies admitted they don’t have the required in-house expertise, staffing levels, budget or tools to adequately embark on and maintain the rigorous security compliance processes and evidence collection required for continuous audit-readiness.
The Costly Burden of Manual Compliance
Indeed, quantifying just how much of a productivity drain legacy manual compliance methods have become, companies with under 500 employees reported spending on average over 2000 hours per year on routine activities like implementing security controls, collecting audit evidence, testing effectiveness, managing audit processes and more.
Embracing Compliance Automation
Clearly recognizing how inadequate, risky and antiquated manual approaches have become for effective security compliance, a resounding 84% of companies in our survey have already deployed or are currently in the process of adopting modern compliance automation platforms. These intelligent automation tools help streamline audits, automatically and continuously collect required evidence, monitor security controls in real-time, and radically reduce the immense time, cost and effort required for compliance compared to manual methods.
For B2B SaaS companies specifically, 92% of B2B SaaS companies say they have either deployed or are in the process of adopting an automation tool.
The Transformative Business Impact of Getting (and Staying) Compliant
While companies certainly feel the inherent complexity of robust security compliance processes and audits, our research surfaces the substantial rewards that companies reap when they make it a priority from the very start. Over half (53%) of companies began dedicated security compliance initiatives and adopted relevant security frameworks within their first or second year of operations. These leaders cited major business benefits from starting compliance early, including some of the following:
- Stronger security practices to protect from breaches/threats;
- Better ability to efficiently comply with data privacy laws and regulations.
Perhaps most compelling, a full 98% of the companies surveyed reported witnessing wide-ranging business benefits after implementing intelligent compliance automation for continuous monitoring and audit-readiness like the solutions Scytale provides. Some of the top cited benefits included competitive differentiation, higher confidence from the board, increased data protection from external and internal threats, and others.
The Future of Compliance
The age of relying solely on manual, documentation-heavy processes and workstreams for security compliance is clearly over for modern, fast-moving companies – especially those in highly-regulated industries dealing with sensitive data like SaaS, fintech, healthcare and more. As our latest research powerfully demonstrates, by adopting intelligent compliance automation solutions from the start, businesses can transform an operational headache into a potent catalyst for efficiency, growth, customer confidence and sustained market advantage.
Interested in seeing how Scytale can transform your security compliance posture through automation? Speak with one of our experts here to learn more.
