What Is Continuous Monitoring and How Does It Relate to Continuous Compliance?

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Keeping up with cybersecurity regulations can sometimes feel like you’re juggling multiple balls — while balancing on one leg with an arm tied behind your back and an impatient cat nipping at your heels. You’ve got multiple frameworks to manage, hundreds of controls to monitor, limited resources to work with, and an anxious boss/client/auditor waiting in the wings. 

And just when you think you’ve got it all under control, new laws and regulations are announced, adding more balls to an act that already requires continuous focus and coordination. 

That’s why security providers and in-house IT teams are implementing continuous control monitoring (CCM) — a technology-based approach that provides 24/7, round-the-clock visibility and control over their systems, people, and processes to meet necessary standards and regulations. When applied to cybersecurity and compliance management, having continuous monitoring processes in place can help you keep track of changes in relevant laws and regulations in real time, enabling proactive security posture evaluation and improvement.

According to the findings of our recent survey of practice leaders and senior operators across hundreds of security providers:

• 86% of respondents are interested in ongoing/continuous compliance as a service offering for their clients.
• 70% said their clients would also be interested in ongoing compliance services to ensure continuous monitoring and scoring.
• 56% of respondents receive less than a quarter of their compliance revenue from recurring engagements versus one-off projects!

With continuous compliance, MSSPs and security-focused MSPs can turn manual, tedious, and repetitive compliance processes into a massively lucrative and long-term opportunity — one that is going largely unmet due to a lack of expertise, resources, and capable tooling. For their clients as well as in-house IT teams, continuous compliance means having an automated, living program that ensures their cybersecurity postures are always robust and aligned with the latest regulatory standards.

In this blog, we discuss continuous compliance in depth, exploring how you can embed real-time monitoring practices into your daily security operations so that meeting regulatory standards becomes second nature.

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What Does Continuous Security Monitoring Really Mean? How is Compliance Related?

Continuous security monitoring is the process of maintaining ongoing, real-time oversight of IT environments, people, and systems. It provides real-time alerts about any suspicious activity, unauthorized access attempts, or potential breaches, keeping you informed about what's happening across  networks and systems. So, how does it relate to continuous compliance? 

It’s fairly straightforward: Continuous monitoring provides real-time alerts on potential threats, while continuous compliance ensures that your security measures meet industry standards and regulations to effectively protect against those threats.

Ongoing or recurring compliance transforms compliance from a check-the-box exercise into a continuous state of improvement and scoring, from assessment to audit-ready programs. It is worth stressing the word “continuous” here. Forbes points out in Security Compliance And The Fight Against Ad Hoc Control Monitoring that CCM differs from traditional control monitoring, which typically relies on an ad-hoc, point-in-time method that only aligns with yearly audit schedules. The main benefit of continuous compliance monitoring is to quickly identify any deviations from security standards, preventing potential breaches and regulatory penalties.

However, not all businesses implement continuous monitoring or know how to do so. This mostly comes from a lack of awareness of the many security controls that you should monitor and the benefits of doing so. So, let’s do a deeper dive.

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Continuous Monitoring of Security Frameworks Creates Business Opportunities for Providers

While security providers can enhance their services through continuous monitoring, the secret sauce to increasing revenue is adopting both continuous monitoring and compliance. 

Continuous compliance is a way to validate and deliver your security services against framework best practices, creating a baseline for measuring and managing security posture. By mapping your services to the common controls they fulfill, you can ensure continuous monitoring of not only your security measures but also how those measures are helping meet framework requirements.

In our inaugural State of Continuous Compliance Report, we observe that security providers are responsible for helping clients meet requirements for several frameworks. About two-thirds (i.e., the majority) of providers currently work with CMMC 2.0, HIPAA, and NIST 800-171. Considering the strict regulations in government and healthcare, these results make complete sense. 

However, monitoring some of the other less common frameworks presents an excellent opportunity for cybersecurity providers. For instance, ISO 42001 — the new standard for artificial intelligence management systems — is expected to be adopted at scale. At present, only 19% of providers offer services for this framework, showing that there is a lot of room for growth. Other frameworks that providers and organizations should be monitoring include:

• SOC 2
• ISO 27001/27002
• PCI DSS
• CIS Controls
• FedRAMP
• CCPA
• GDPR
• FISMA
• COBIT

If you provide cybersecurity services, you’re likely already addressing compliance framework requirements in some way. But if you aren’t bundling those security services with a formalized compliance offering, you’re missing a valuable opportunity and some major benefits.

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The Many Benefits of Achieving Continuous Security Monitoring and Compliance

The benefits of continuous security monitoring and compliance go way beyond enhanced security. Perhaps the most important benefit for security providers is the revenue and growth potential that it can unlock. The State of Compliance Report shows that:

• 3 out of 4 providers view compliance as a high-growth area.
• 70% are targeting at least double-digit ARR/MRR growth.
• But despite aggressive revenue goals and clear growth potential, continuous compliance only represents a small percentage of overall business and revenue.

Here are some of the other ways MSSPs and security-focused MSPs can benefit from ongoing compliance paired with continuous security monitoring:

✔️ Turn One-Off Projects Into Long-Term Client Relationships: Continuously monitoring compliance with security frameworks (instead of ad hoc or in the lead up to audits) can bring recurring revenue, expand margins, and improve customer retention. Despite the huge interest, not many providers are taking this approach, giving you a big chance to stand out.

✔️Create a Formal, Productized Compliance Offering: Develop a clear, packaged compliance offering and bundle it with current security services such as threat detection, incident response, vulnerability management, and network security. By productizing your existing services through the lens of framework-based compliance, you can go to market with a fully formed, continuous solution that maximizes recurring revenue.

✔️Validate Your Security Services and Promote Best Practices: Align your cybersecurity services with recognized compliance standards to establish a strong security foundation. By doing so, you not only meet regulatory requirements but also implement industry best practices, enhancing your overall security management and building trust with clients.This approach makes your security services more appealing and proves their effectiveness by showing how they’re helping satisfy framework controls.

✔️Differentiate Your Compliance Services: Go beyond consulting and risk assessments. Continuous monitoring and compliance as a managed service can help fill security gaps, increase revenue, and make your services stand out from single-minded competitors who offer limited services. 

✔️Automate Manual Tracking: Upgrading to continuous compliance automation platforms offers a more comprehensive, differentiated, and valuable service to your clients. Plus, automating compliance boosts revenue growth and efficiency while improving bandwidth and efficiency.

✔️ Comply Everywhere, All At Once: Continuous monitoring generates detailed logs and reports, which are essential for demonstrating to auditors and regulatory bodies that you're consistently meeting security standards everywhere, all at once. 

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Cybersecurity Continuous Monitoring Best Practices For Security Providers

Now that you understand why compliance matters, let’s take a closer look at some industry best practices you should follow for your clients. In-house security teams should also follow the recommendations below for their own organizations: 

1. Know Compliance Standards: Ensure familiarity with compliance standards to meet industry regulations and avoid legal repercussions for your clients. 
2. Identify Critical Assets: Pinpoint all critical assets to focus protection efforts on the most valuable and vulnerable parts of your client's infrastructure. 
3. Find and Fix Gaps: Proactively identify and address gaps within your client’s security posture to prevent potential breaches and vulnerabilities.
4. Establish and Enable Controls: Implement robust controls to safeguard against unauthorized access and other threats. 
5. Set Up Continuous Insights: Deploy real-time monitoring to immediately detect security threats, enabling your clients to respond in a timely manner. 
6. Maintain Clear Documentation and Communication: Keep thorough records and ensure effective communication of security policies and incidents. 

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Which Continuous Monitoring Tools Should You Choose?

Following the best practices above will be much easier if you choose the best security monitoring tool or platform. Most providers are eager to boost their recurring revenue by offering continuous compliance as a service, but many aren't seizing the opportunity. Why? According to our State of Continuous Compliance report: 45% lack resources, 42% say costs get in the way, 37% lack expertise, and 36% lack the right tools.

Traditional compliance efforts are usually manual, requiring specialized knowledge and a lot of resources. Managing countless requirements and controls can be a nightmare, especially when everything's spread across spreadsheets and folders. This disorganized approach often leads to inefficiencies and missed compliance standards.

That's why picking the right continuous monitoring tools is crucial for continuous compliance. These tools provide real-time alerts when something falls out of compliance, allowing for quick fixes and keeping security and compliance a priority all year round, not just during audits. This not only lightens the load for providers but also ensures their clients get up-to-date, efficient, and effective compliance management that abides by industry best practices.

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How Apptega Helps Achieve Continuous Compliance Monitoring

Apptega is the end-to-end cybersecurity compliance platform that security-focused IT providers and in-house teams choose to build and manage cybersecurity compliance programs simply, quickly, and continuously. Here’s how:

Centralized and Up-to-Date Reporting:

Apptega makes it easy to create a single source of truth for your compliance data. With real-time visibility into cybersecurity compliance, you can keep all key stakeholders in the loop. Its multi-tenant view is perfect for security providers, allowing you to monitor the progress of your compliance programs with ease. 

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‍A Myriad of Integrations:‍

Apptega connects directly to all your sources of truth and integrates them with your data systems and project management tools. This streamlines your workflows and lets you continuously monitor security status. With one of the largest networks of integrations and an open API, Apptega ensures everything stays connected and up to date.

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Framework Crosswalking:

Apptega eliminates the hassle of repetitive work by helping you map multiple compliance frameworks with a single click. The average organization needs to comply with 3-5 frameworks, and starting from scratch each time is not an option. Apptega supports over 30 compliance frameworks, making cross-assessment easy and keeping your compliance scores updated at all times. 

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The Apptega platform is trusted by hundreds of MSSPs and security-focused MSPs who are growing lucrative compliance practices, creating stickier customer relationships, and winning more business from competitors.To experience how Apptega can help you achieve continuous monitoring and compliance, get your 14-day free trial now.