Early Security Integration: Continuous Compliance as Part of a Product Roadmap

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The Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) of the European Union (EU) forms part of the new plan by the bloc to ensure that all digital products are protected from cyber threats. Introduced in 2024, major provisions will come fully into force in 2027 giving enough time for manufacturers to comply. Though the CRA is uniquely European, it’s expected to have a major influence across the globe. Again, that underpins the need for a well-rounded vision to be set in a product roadmap to include long-term objectives and strategic direction. Having a well-defined roadmap enables management to make informed decisions around priorities to deliver maximum value to customers and businesses alike. Continuous compliance saves expensive rework, cuts fines and penalties, smooths audits, and secures a product from security breaches and against emergent threats.

Security Is At The Heart of the SPDL - Secure Product Development Lifecycle

To ensure continuous compliance as part of the product roadmap, a clear and practical framework must be developed during the planning phase. Therefore, a business needs to identify all relevant compliance networks including general data protection regulation (GPDR) and health insurance portability and accountability act (HIPAA), among others. This means treating security compliance like product features. This approach requires structured planning that will connect all compliance activities to the product life cycles. Based on the requirements, acceptance criteria will be set through a preliminary initial risk assessment. On this note, threat modeling can be done to proactively identify and mitigate design flows. Mapping data flows and design boundaries lead to secure architecture patterns and protocols. In essence, the company builds in security by design in its product’s roadmap.

Compliance Requirements That Become Product Features

Part of security compliance is to translate activities into ‘real product items’ not just internal chores. Start by identifying the risks a particular control can mitigate including defining the scope of data or system. For example, logging all user actions and retaining them for a year focuses on traceability for security investigations. Next, it is critical to identify all user groups affected by the compliance requirements. In audit logging, end-users are affected indirectly while admin is directly involved as it reviews logs alerted by the security teams.

Naturally, it is vital that the compliance requirement must be translated into a capability that a product must have. Once the capability is clearly identified, the requirement of the product features may be outlined to include inputs, workflow, outputs, and constraints. Acceptance criteria may be developed based on control requirements. After that, results can be validated with the stakeholders ensuring that only the components that satisfy compliance are included.

Testing, Logging, and Monitoring

The testing phase can also use techniques such as vulnerability scanning and formal penetration testing (also known as pen testing) to validate controls that verify security requirements and compliance criteria are met. Moreover, production environments must be also securely configured. Continuous monitoring and logging ensure that the business can respond to an incident immediately and correctly while a regular patch and update management process reduce risks and vulnerabilities to attacks. In case of a breach, the company must have a defined incident response (IR).

To illustrate, cybersecurity maturity model certification or CMMC compliance is a mandatory compliance framework for US defense contractors and researchers. It is meant to enhance the security of the defense industrial base (DIB). Since November this year, CMMC requirements are part of the new Department of Defense (DoD) contract solicitation process. Thus, contractors who are bidding on a new contract are covered by mandatory CMMC compliance. Contractors shall submit an annual self-assessment and affirmation of continuous compliance. There may even be third-party assessments for contracts that require level 2 certifications, that is, for controlled unclassified information (CUI). For contracts that involve the most sensitive CUI, level 3 assessments are introduced.

Positioning Security Compliance within a Product Roadmap

Aligning security compliance with the product roadmap is a strategic business decision. Therefore, it is of prime importance to set goals by defining clear and measurable compliance objectives that support the product like achieving a system and organization controls (SOC) 2 type II compliance by a certain period of time. SOC 2 is one of the most respected auditing frameworks developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) that is crucial in demonstrating how tech companies prove they can securely manage and protect customer data. According to a PwC survey, 40% of business leaders polled consider cyber-attacks as a serious risk. Therefore, it serves as an attestation standard that an independent auditor uses to evaluate an organization.

In addition, it is critical to tie compliance to business goals not just obligations. For instance, instead of saying that SOC 2 controls must implemented, a business can link SOC 2 controls to reel in customers by protecting data and building trust, shorten security measures, reduce operational and compliance risk, support business requirements. Therefore, compliance tasks should be treated by organizations as high-priority features on a product roadmap. This way, compliance activities are treated as product features and not side tasks. These components include audit logging, role-based access controls, encryption upgrades, vulnerability scanning automation, and access review process. On top of categorizing compliance work into strategic phases like audits, data isolation, monitoring, and automation, the activity must also include milestones when releasing cycles. Each release should bring enhanced security and compliance maturity in the product.

Tools and Personnel Training Are Indispensable

The findings on the risk assessment will be driving the prioritization of which security controls to implement first. As such, resources must be allocated from the beginning including tools, training, and personnel to ensure security compliance. Just like a team sport, security compliance is a team effort, and a company empowers personnel to be trained and own the security of their code and infrastructure. Furthermore, regular secure coding and compliance training will dramatically reduce the cost, time, and risk associated with vulnerabilities and non-compliance.

To make compliance scalable, controls could be automated to reduce manual efforts making compliance scalable. Tools that provide real-time visibility and reporting will demonstrate continuous adherence for auditors. Some pertinent examples include the mean time to remediate (MTTR) critical vulnerabilities and the percentage of code covered by security testing. Through these practices, security compliance turns into a business enabler to reduce risks, build customer trust, and accelerate market entry into other industries. Compliance work has also a brand and customer value which means that a business must use this advantage to differentiate the enterprise from the competitor, project a sign of platform maturity, and market the company as an organization that is trustworthy because it handles data responsibly.