Observability for Compliance: Leveraging Observability to Meet Compliance Requirements

Recently, I collaborated with a few co-workers to develop various resilience scenarios that our organization must be prepared for should those events arise, encompassing both secure and non-secure aspects. We had to consider regulatory compliance while developing solutions for each scenario, which led me to ponder how observability can facilitate compliance attainment.

In today's digital landscape, organizations must adhere to regulations and industry-specific standards to maintain the trust of their clients and stakeholders. This is applicable across various fields, including healthcare, finance, and information technology. Fortunately, observability, a crucial element of modern software development and operations, can significantly aid organizations in meeting their compliance obligations. This write-up explores the link between observability and compliance and how companies can leverage it to fulfil their regulatory requirements.

Understanding Compliance Requirements

To fully comprehend the benefits of observability in relation to compliance, it's important to have a clear understanding of what compliance requirements involve. Compliance refers to organization following a set of regulations, including laws, standards, codes, and policies, that aim to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data and systems. Examples of well-known compliance standards include:

PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard): PCI DSS governs the secure handling of credit card data and is essential for any business involved in payment processing.
GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation): GDPR is a European regulation that addresses data privacy and protection, imposing strict requirements on organizations handling personal data of European Union citizens.
SOC 2 (System and Organization Controls): SOC 2 reports assess the controls an organization has in place for security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and customer data privacy.
HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act): This U.S. healthcare regulation focuses on protecting patients' health information and requires healthcare organizations to safeguard sensitive data. In Australia, we have the Privacy Act.

There are other not-so-well-known standards that organizations need to comply with, such as the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and the Federal Information Security Management Act. Each country may have its compliance guidelines that may differ from other countries.

Generally compliance can be classified into two types: regulatory compliance, which adheres to legal mandates and regulations established by governing bodies, and corporate compliance, which pertains to a company following its own internal compliance structure.

For many organizations, adhering to these standards is not a choice but rather a legal obligation that must be upheld. Failure to comply can result in fines, penalties, and harm to one's reputation. To navigate the complexities of these requirements, organizations must employ methods that prioritize transparency, accountability, and thorough monitoring of their systems and processes, making observability a critical aspect.

The Role of Observability in Compliance

Observability, in the context of systems, refers to the ability to gain insights into the behaviour of a system by analysing its outputs, even without deep knowledge of its internal workings. It encompasses data types such as metrics, logs, and traces to provide a holistic view of system performance, security, and reliability. However, as the use cases for Observability expand beyond break/fix, it is becoming evident that it can aid organizations in meeting compliance requirements in various key ways:

1. Continuous Monitoring and Auditing

Organizations must continuously monitor their systems and processes to comply with various standards. Observability tools enable them to collect real-time data about the behaviour of their systems, including performance, security, and access control. This data is essential for auditing to ensure that systems meet compliance standards. For instance, PCI DSS requires monitoring of cardholder data and system access. Observability tools can capture relevant data such as logs and metrics to create a complete audit trail of user activities and system events.

2. Security Incident Detection and Response

Many compliance standards, such as GDPR and HIPAA, emphasize security and require organizations to promptly detect and respond to security incidents. Observability enables organizations to proactively monitor for security threats, including unusual access patterns, data breaches, and unauthorized activities. By collecting different data types (logs, traces, metrics or others) related to security events, observability tools can help organizations identify security incidents as they occur, allowing for swift and effective incident response.

3. Data Privacy and Protection

Compliance standards like GDPR and HIPAA require organizations to protect sensitive data and ensure its privacy. Observability tools can assist in monitoring data flows and access to sensitive information. By tracking data-related metrics and auditing data access logs, organizations can demonstrate that they have the necessary safeguards to protect sensitive data.

4. Performance and Availability

To meet various compliance standards, organizations must ensure the performance and availability of their systems. Observability provides insights into system performance, including response times, error rates, and resource utilization, to name a few. By proactively monitoring these metrics, organizations can identify and address performance issues before they impact users or violate compliance standards.

5. Change Management and Version Control

Many compliance standards require organizations to maintain strict control over system and application changes. Observability tools can help organizations track environment changes, including code deployments, configuration changes, and infrastructure updates. By correlating observability data with change events, organizations can demonstrate compliance with change management requirements and quickly identify any issues introduced by changes, as mandated by ISO 27001 and SOC 2.

Benefits of Observability for Compliance

There are several benefits to using observability for compliance, including:

Reduced risk of non-compliance: It can assist organizations in identifying and resolving compliance risks before they escalate into major issues.
Improved security posture: Observability can enable organizations to detect and respond to security threats more quickly and effectively.
Reduce cost: Observability can help organizations avoid non-compliance costs, such as fines and penalties.
Increase efficiency: Observability can help organizations streamline their compliance processes and reduce the amount of time and effort spent on compliance.

Best Practices for Using Observability for Compliance

To use observability effectively for compliance, it is important for organizations to follow these best practices:

Clearly define compliance requirements: To begin, it is essential to understand the specific compliance standards that apply to your organization and the requirements they impose. Develop a clear understanding of what needs to be monitored and audited. Occasionally, the requirements may lack clarity, requiring discussion among various parties to simplify/improve them.
Select appropriate observability tools: Choose observability tools and platforms that align with your compliance requirements. Make sure that these tools can capture and retain the necessary data when it may be needed. As observability tools mature,
Implement comprehensive monitoring : Implement monitoring across all relevant aspects of your systems and processes. This includes monitoring infrastructure, applications, user access, CICD pipelines, data flows and so forth.
Automate compliance checks & Alerts: Use observability tools to automate compliance checks and audits. Set up alerts and notifications to detect deviations from compliance standards in real time. For example for developer-enabled compliance, automating Dependabot, developers can promptly receive alerts about any dependency related security threats and seamlessly take appropriate action within their workflows.
Integrate with compliance workflows: Integrate observability into your compliance workflows. Use observability data to generate compliance reports, conduct audits, and provide evidence of adherence to regulatory requirements.
Regularly review and update: Compliance standards evolve over time. Regularly review your observability practices and update them to align with the latest requirements and best practices.
Encrypt and protect observability data: Given the sensitivity of observability data, implement encryption and access controls to protect it from unauthorized access or tampering.
Train and educate teams: Ensure that your teams are trained and educated on the observability tools and practices relevant to compliance. Effective observability requires collaboration between development, operations, business and security teams.

Final Thoughts

Maintaining compliance is crucial for organizations, and observability is a powerful tool that can help achieve this goal. Robust observability practices and tools can provide transparency, accountability, and real-time monitoring of systems and processes. Adopting observability can enhance security, performance, and reliability of digital services, making it an essential part of compliance strategies.

As compliance requirements evolve, observability will continue to play a critical role in ensuring organizations meet and maintain compliance. By prioritizing observability, organizations can build trust with customers and stakeholders while effectively safeguarding sensitive data and systems.