IT compliance jobs can be found within a consulting firm and thus provides expertise to the consulting firms clients or they may be found as part of a compliance team with an organization. The second scenario would usually occur where the organization is large. The actual responsibilities of persons in IT compliance careers vary from one institution to the next. Some of the functions that an IT compliance team will be charged with are as follows:
Advisory services
Advisory services are one of the core roles of IT compliance jobs. There are usually two components of advisory services. The first is IT assurance and the second is technology security and business continuity. For assurance, IT compliance teams evaluate an organization's core systems to conform that the data and output is as expected/required. The compliance team checks to ensure that any operational risks within an application are identified and mitigated. The team will test systems and verify that each system meets the required level of security to meet best industry practice.
On the second advisory aspect of technology security and business continuity, IT compliance careers ensure that the business' IT systems are safe from entry by cyber criminals. The compliance team also monitors system resilience by establishing the controls around IT system that will lead to the systems having the ability to withstand disruption of service. In the event that a disruption that occurs, measures in place would allows for recovery in a short time.
Securing and Managing Electronic Evidence
During the course of business, organizations will likely at some point be involved in either a dispute or an internal review whether they will be required to gather evidence in a way that ensures its integrity. In fact, most of the data could be in electronic form. It may be on laptops, desktop computers, servers and back-up tapes and disks. IT compliance jobs support the organization, regulator or the courts in identifying and securing the data in accordance to the law and best practice.
The process will often involve data collection where the information will be collected using various techniques such as memory imaging. Data collection may on a single device such as a laptop or may span multiple devices on a network. The data is then reviewed to pick out what is relevant from what is not. This filtering can be done by using a date range that adequately covers the review period or the time during which the incidence may have taken place, or it could be through the use of keywords that relate to the incident being reviewed. This is why IT compliance careers require strong skills in project management. The compliance team will sometimes not just be required to process the evidence but they may be called upon to give written and/or oral testimony to expound on the electronic data.
Intellectual Property Management
Due to the continuous need to innovate, institutions will often come up with unique ideas and techniques to move them forward. Increasingly, these ideas and techniques are electronic and it's not just in software companies. The intellectual property in the form of software and other electronic data needs to be managed and made use of in the best way possible. IT compliance jobs help organizations do this. For instance, if a software company develops an application and allows it to be shipped together under license with an operating system from another firm on the premise that the software company will receive royalties from each sale of the operating system, it is the work of the compliance team to monitor the process and ensure that licensees accurately report sales numbers.
