compliance as a service
April 30, 2024

Puppet + Penacity: Secure Critical Infrastructure with Compliance as a Service

Security & Compliance

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Compliance as a Service (CaaS) can help you tackle some of your biggest compliance challenges like quick policy changes, evolving security risks, and talent shortages. In this blog, we’ll give you options for handling compliance (and ultimately, security) based on your current needs, and help you assess next steps toward a more compliant and secure infrastructure. 

Table of Contents: 

What is Compliance as a Service? 

You can embed compliance or risk fines — Compliance as a Service (CaaS) helps organizations achieve regulatory compliance and reduce risk by working as a third-party expert for organizations that need help with compliance implementation and management. 

For highly regulated industries like government, finance, or healthcare — compliance isn’t optional. Some common industry standards like CMMC 2.0 and CIS Benchmarks are frequently changed and updated to address security concerns and breaches. Take for instance the recent XZ Utils vulnerability, where hackers were able to execute arbitrary commands on the affected machine before the authentication step — hijacking the entire system. 

Not all organizations working in regulated industries have the talent to support a continuous compliance initiative and stay on top of these changing regulations and threats — this is where Compliance as a Service comes in. 

Using a third-party vendor like Penacity who implements Puppet software, Compliance as a Service can be put to work in your organization and accomplish tasks like: 

  • Monitoring current risk levels 
  • Enforcing company policy 
  • Preventing digital loss 
  • Offering real-time threat intelligence 
  • Implementing and maintaining compliance benchmarks 

Compliance isn’t a one-and-done task — it needs to be continuously updated, monitored, and enforced. 

Compliance as a Service vs. In-House Compliance 

You might have what you need to implement compliance in-house, but we’ll help you compare your options as you look toward a compliance solution: 

Feature:

Compliance as a Service (CaaS)

In-House Compliance Management

Cost:

Lower upfront costs, potentially lower overall costs with efficient CaaS provider (like Penacity!) 

Higher upfront costs for hiring and training staff, software, and ongoing maintenance 

Expertise:

Access to specialized compliance knowledge and experience 

Requires internal expertise or reliance on external consultants 

Technology:

Integrated compliance tools with automation and real-time monitoring 

May require separate compliance enforcement software (like Puppet!) 

Scalability:

Scales easily with business growth 

Requires additional resources (staff, software) for increased compliance needs 

Time Commitment:

Less internal time needed for compliance tasks 

Requires dedicated staff time for compliance management 

For IT departments at small or medium-sized companies, Compliance as a Service might be the best option for securing critical infrastructure. CaaS can also help organizations build a framework to work from the start, kicking off a potential in-house offering in the future. 

How to Achieve Secure Critical Infrastructure 

Whether you decide to set and enforce compliance in-house or use CaaS, there will always be the same series of steps when you start with compliance as code. Defining your compliance regulations as code can help you avoid the slowdown and misconfiguration risks of manual compliance enforcement. 

Why start with compliance as code? 

  • Faster Software Delivery: Manual compliance checks slow down development. Compliance as code automates them, streamlining the process. 
  • Reduced Audit Burden: It eliminates the need for manual audit prep by automating tracking, reporting, and proof generation. 
  • Fewer Data Breaches: Misconfigurations are a major cause of breaches. Compliance as code reduces manual configuration and errors. 

Get Started with Compliance as a Service 

Ready to start enforcing compliance as code in-house? Puppet can:

  • Automate Industry Standards: Enforce CIS and DISA-STIG compliance automatically, reducing errors and effort. 
  • Facilitate Effortless Audits: Demonstrate consistent compliance with pre-built, up-to-date configurations. No more scrambling before audits. 
  • Focus on Innovation: Free up hundreds of hours for valuable projects by automating tedious compliance tasks. 

Prefer the extra help? Penacity experts can use Puppet within your infrastructure to manage end-to-end compliance along and: 

  • Fill in Talent Gaps: You don’t need to add extra resources or hire a specialist to handle your compliance needs with Penacity. 
  • Save You Time + Effort: You let Penacity know what compliance regulations and internal policies to follow, and they transform this into compliance as code that is monitored 24/7. 
  • Ensure Proactive Security: Don’t wait for the inevitable breach and then scramble — stay on top of changing regulations and security concerns by relying on Penacity to stay proactive. 

No matter where you’re at managing compliance and security, you have options that can help you stay one step ahead: 

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