Getting introduced

(Regulatory) Compliance means confirmation (given typically by an organization) that they are following rules and regulations. The one who is compliant is aware of and take steps to comply with relevant laws and regulations (by Wikipedia definition).
IT continues (and will continue for long time in future) to act as backbone for most of the organizations. Organization’s valuable data including personal details of customers and employees is a crucial and critical information. Compromising security or integrity of the data has resulted in sever financial losses.
World is connected through internet and so as the corporate network of any organization. People can log-in or hack-in into the organization’s network. Depending upon availability of rights (authorization), they can steal or manipulate data available in the computer networks. In past, they used to attack the network just to refrain it from working. Now they use or manipulate organizational data for their own benefit. Such type of crime is popularly known as white-collar crime. Typically, white-collar criminals are intellectuals. It becomes difficult to locate them openly as they are socialized in educated class of people.
In order to reduce the impact of white collar crime, federal government of US has enacted different laws and regulations. Countries like Australia and UK have also shown active participation in enacting similar laws. When an organization is not compliant, that means, sooner or later it will have to face civil or criminal penalties (for violating the law).
Finally they say, "go legal".
Lets figure out IFs and BUTs.
Keeping an organization compliant itself becomes an organizational goal and generates need of maintaining separate compliance department. Chief compliance officer (department head) is responsible for managing all compliance issues of the organization.
For midsize or bigger organization, evaluating itself for being compliant is a nightmare, even if there is a dedicated department available for it. The evaluation process involves collecting organization wide critical data and evaluating it against regulations. The problem becomes more severe when the organization spans multiple geographical regions. Such an organization needs to remain compliant with all regulations mandated by each country they are established in. Organizations spend heavily for compliance. Cost of being compliant is one more unavoidable expense, just like other IT expenses. They will try their best to reduce it. How? It's not simple to answer that.
I still don’t know, what I don’t know about compliance. I will keep searching for it and keep posting here as well. Technicalities and specific topics will be discussed in future. But your comments will definitely add up my understanding. So don’t hesitate to add your comments.

See you soon. Bye.

Welcome

I have spent more than a year and half working on a compliance product. For me, there is still lot more to learn about how exactly the product is solving customer’s problems. Most of us are new to this domain. This blog series is just to capture what I have understood about compliance.