A 'Compliance First' Mindset Limits Liabilities for SMBs­

By adopting a Compliance First strategy, when choosing solutions and vendors, you will identify those that do not comply with your requirements, eliminate them from your selection process, and then select from the rest. It also means evaluating your current solutions and vendors and replacing those that cannot support your compliance requirements.

In simple terms, ­­compliance is anything someone else makes you do. This means laws, regulations, contracts, and even the terms of a cyber insurance policy.

Failure to act responsibly can have devastating results — hefty penalties, lawsuits, investigations, and the failure to have insurance cover big claims that can exceed $1 million.

If you think compliance is unimportant for you or only applies to enterprises, think again. Not one single business is immune to compliance regulations, which is in fact, a good thing. By knowing your business must be compliant, you can avoid fines and penalties, improve operational safety, improve public relations, prevent attrition and above all, ensure that liability insurance claims pay out in the event of an incident. Compliance has a measurable Return on Investment (ROI).

By making the ‘Compliance First’ approach your first step, you can meet minimum regulatory requirements to protect against fines while also staying in compliance with liability insurance requirements. After this, you can improve your business’ compliance posture further by adopting additional measures.