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Don’t Sell “Compliance” If It Isn’t A Checkbox

Rich August 18, 2008 No Comments

Perusing my blogs this morning I caught a post by Anton on DLP and compliance. That’s the blogging equivalent of chaining a nice fat bunny to a stake in the middle of coyote territory here in Phoenix (in other words, the park behind our house). I, as the rabid coyote of DLP-ness, am compelled to respond. Anton starts by wondering why he doesn’t see compliance more in DLP vendor literature: Today I was thinking about DLP again 🙂 (yes, I know that “content monitoring and protection” – CMF – is a better description) Specifically, I was thinking about DLP and compliance. At first, it was truly amazing to me that DLP vendors “under-utilize” compliance in their messaging. In other words, they don’t push the “C-word” as strongly as many other security companies. Compliance dog doesn’t snarl at you from their front pages and it doesn’t bite you in you ass when you read the whitepapers, etc. Sure, it is mentioned there, but, seemingly, as an after-thought. Then, he nails the answer: But you know what? I actually think that it is something different, much more sinister. It is the ominous checklist mentality (here too)! You know, DLP is newer than most regulations (PCI DSS, HIPAA, FISMA, etc) and – what a shock! – the documentation for these mandates just doesn’t mention DLP (or CMF) by name. Sure, they talk about data protection (e.g. PCI DSS Requirements 3 and 4), but mostly in terms of encryption, access control, logging (of course!). Also, PCI DSS directly and explicitly says “get a firewall”, “deploy log management”, “get scanned”, “install and update AV” – but where is DLP? Ain’t there… I’ve spent a heck of a lot of time working with DLP vendors and users, and this is a problem that affects technologies beyond just DLP. Early on, the DLP vendors all talked about how they’d make you SOX, HIPAA, or XXX compliant. Problem was, there isn’t a regulation out there that requires DLP. The customer conversations went like this: Vendor: PCI compliance is bad. Buy DLP. User: Okay, is that section 3.1 or 3.2 that requires DLP? Vendor: It’s not in there yet, but… {sales guy monkey dance} User: Ah. I see. Can you come back after we finish remediating our audit deficiencies? Say in 2012? Q3? The truth is that DLP can help significantly with compliance with a variety of regulations, but none of them require it. As a result, vendors have softened their message and the good ones adjust it to show this value. I don’t know if I really influenced this, but it’s something I’ve spent a lot of time working on with my vendor clients over the years. Other markets face this same challenge, and if you look back they almost always start by hitting compliance for the apparently easy cash, and are then forced to adjust messaging unless they are explicitly required. Users also face the same problem: User: We need to do X for compliance with Y. Money Guy/Boss: Okay, where is that on the audit report? User: It’s not, but {monkey dance}. Money Guy/Boss: Ah. I see. Maybe we can discuss this during your annual review. Be it a vendor or an end user, the compliance sell is either the easiest or hardest you’ll ever face. If the regulation (or your auditor) explicitly requires something, there’s an immediate business justification. While there’s a lot more to compliance, if it isn’t on that list you can’t sell it with merely the C word. Instead, evaluate the tool or process in the context of compliance and show the business benefits. Does it reduce compliance costs? Does it reduce your risk of an exposure? For example, DLP content discovery, by identifying where credit card data is stored, can reduce both audit costs and the risk of non-compliance. Database Activity Monitoring can reduce SOX audit costs and the cost of maintaining appropriate logging on financial databases. There are a ton of internal process changes that improve audit efficiency and reduce the burden of generating compliance reports last minute every year or quarter. When something is on the checklist, sell it as compliance. When it’s off that list, sell it as cost or risk reduction. If it doesn’t hit those categories, buy a monkey to do the dance- it’s cuter than you are and more likely to get the banana. Share:

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