IT’s Biggest Compliance Gaps: Are You Breaking the Law Without Realizing It?

IT compliance is important for protecting data, avoiding fines, and maintaining customer trust. However, keeping up with evolving regulations is challenging and it’s not always clear when you have gaps in your processes.

Even when you understand the laws, ensuring they’re consistently applied across teams and locations is another challenge. You’re unlikely to have full visibility into every process. You might miss small problems until they’ve already caused serious issues and irreversible damage.

Our article explores common IT compliance gaps businesses overlook. Learn how these gaps expose you to risk and how to fix them before they lead to penalties, legal action, and reputational harm.

Why IT compliance failures are a massive business risk

IT compliance failures can lead to significant fines and legal penalties. For example, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) charges up to €20 million or 4% of total profits for serious offenses, whichever is higher.

Even if your business can afford these fines, dealing with the fallout can drain resources and disrupt operations. Your business might need to halt some operations to manage:

• Legal proceedings
• Audits
• Investigations
• License revocations
• Contract terminations
• Loss of access to services

A major compliance failure can even damage your brand reputation. Your company may face public scrutiny, causing stakeholders to question your reliability and making it harder to attract new business. Surveys indicate you could lose up to a third of your customers.

Employees may also lose confidence in leadership if they feel you don’t take security and compliance seriously. They may feel concerned you can’t look after their best interests.

See also: Top IT Procurement Challenges and How to Solve Them

Biggest IT compliance gaps businesses overlook

Many companies focus on outside threats when it comes to IT processes. The reality is that most data breaches are non-malicious and involve an employee making a basic mistake or missing a system vulnerability.

Here’s what your business really needs to watch out for:

Lack of local awareness

Businesses operating across multiple locations might assume their IT policy will cover all legal requirements. However, compliance regulations can vary by country, region, and sometimes even industry.

The healthcare sector is a well-known example. Some countries have separate laws for how businesses process patient and insurance data, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the US.

Local regulations also frequently change. If your company doesn’t actively track updates everywhere it operates, you may overlook a new policy and inadvertently violate the law.

Weak data encryption standards and policies

Encryption is a key defense against data breaches but many businesses don’t use strong standards for storage and during transfers. This leaves your system vulnerable to outside threats.

The fact that your company was the target of an attack is irrelevant. You’re still likely to face penalties if sensitive information gets lost or exposed and the local authorities find you to be negligent.

Even if your business uses strong encryption, poor management can create vulnerabilities in your system. You must be able to both instate and enforce policies. Otherwise, team members might make mistakes like failing to encrypt company data or leaving encryption keys in easily accessible places.

Remote teams are particularly vulnerable to these risks. They send files backward and forward every day, giving hackers more opportunities to gain unauthorized access to data transfers.

See also: Top 10 MDM Solutions for Improving Device Security and Workforce Efficiency

Improper handling of personal and financial data

Businesses often process large amounts of personal and financial data. Without proper safeguards, you may expose this information and incur penalties.

Here are some examples of where data is especially vulnerable to breaches:

• Transfers over unsecured networks or noncompliant platforms
• Data entry into spreadsheets
• Messages, both internal and external
• Shared files and folders on the company cloud
• Screen sharing during meetings

Small mistakes with data processing can have catastrophic effects. For example, an employee at Virgin Media accidentally exposed close to one million customer accounts back in 2020. All they did was incorrectly configure fields in an internal database.

Poor access controls and user management

Many companies give employees more access to data than necessary, increasing the risk of misuse, negligence, or human error.

After workers leave, companies also fail to revoke access with potentially devastating consequences. In a recent study, almost half of ex-employees admitted to using their old credentials to log back into the system. A further 10% said they’d deliberately interfered with company processes.

Weak access controls also leave your system more vulnerable to threats. 59% of businesses still rely on usernames and passwords alone to authenticate logins but cyber criminals can easily hack these. Plus, employees might write down or share credentials, giving opportunistic hackers another route into your system.

See also: IT Asset Tracking: A Complete Guide to Smarter Device Management

Lack of employee training

Employees are often the weak link due to phishing and social engineering - that’s where hackers gain access to your system by manipulating users into sharing their login details.

However, businesses may not invest sufficient time and resources into training teams or keeping them updated about the latest threats. Some might introduce new policies or provide one-off sessions but these are largely ineffective. As new threats emerge all the time, employees must receive continuous training and updates to understand how to maintain compliance.

Inadequate IT risk assessments and audits

A lack of regular risk assessments and audits means vulnerabilities are more likely to go unnoticed for weeks and months. Teams may react quickly when they realize but the damage is likely to be done. It only takes a few seconds for a mistake to expose hundreds of sensitive files or for a hacker to steal financial records.

Without stress testing, you also can’t tell if your defenses work. You might think your system is secure but hackers may have found alternative routes or discovered gaps in your protocols.

Key compliance frameworks businesses must follow

The first step to ensuring compliance is understanding which rules and guidelines your business needs to follow. Here’s a list of the key regulatory bodies:

• **GDPR: **The GDPR regulates data protection and privacy within the EU. It has a wide jurisdiction, covering both EU citizens and companies that transfer data within its borders.
• **UK Data Protection Act: **As the UK has left the EU, they’ve established their own version of the GDPR. Many of the regulations and guidelines are the same
• **California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA): **While the US doesn’t regulate data privacy and protection at the federal level, many states have created policies. The CCPA is one of the most notable as it one of the first and the most comprehensive
• **Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS): **This framework applies to any businesses worldwide that process, store, or transmit credit card information. You must follow its security requirements for both your customers and workers on your payroll
• **HIPAA: **This law sets standards for how you process healthcare data in the US. While companies may not have patients, they must still follow these rules when they administer healthcare insurance and workers’ compensation
• **ISO 27001: **Unlike the other compliance frameworks, ISO 27001 is a global standard rather than a set of regulations. You can follow its guidelines to prove your organization meets stringent IT compliance requirements

However, it’s a good best practice to meet the highest compliance standards instead of just following the regulations where you operate.

As you manage data privacy across borders, you may become subject to any of these laws without realizing it. A comprehensive strategy ensures you remain compliant whether you’re entering a new market or hiring a single contractor abroad.

How businesses can close their IT compliance gaps

What are some best practices for maintaining IT compliance standards even for remote, distributed teams? Here are some proven methods:

1. Receive continuous compliance updates

Researching all the applicable laws where you operate demands a lot of time and resources. Instead, subscribe to a regulatory bulletin to get advanced warning of any changes.

For example, Deel gives all our customers access to our continuous compliance hub. We explain the changes or updates in plain English and how they may affect your operations.

2. Centralize ITAM processes

Use a unified system to track and manage all company IT assets. This allows you to enforce compliance consistently across all your divisions, reducing the risk of gaps.

Deel IT is a global system. We can cover operations in over 130 countries, including deployment, device management, and recovery in accordance with the GDPR and CCPA. Plus, our IT solution integrates with our HR and payroll products so you can manage all three seamlessly when you enter new markets. \

See also: Best IT Asset Management Software of 2025: Top 15 Picks

3. Use strong password protection

Require employees to use stronger passwords. They should be at least 12 characters long with a combination of different letters, numbers, and symbols; otherwise, they can be hacked within minutes.

As passwords are no longer foolproof, use software with multi-factor authentication to verify each team member’s identity. For example, Deel asks users to scan a QR code with their device camera. This prevents hackers from accessing the account and deters employees from sharing accounts.

4. Apply granular permissions

Only let employees access what they need to see. Assign permissions based on their role requirements and seniority within the company.

For instance, HR needs access to personnel files to manage benefits. Other members of your team don’t need to see these documents, which often include details about their colleague’s health, personal finances, and family situations.

Look for software that lets you apply role based access controls (RBAC). To give you an idea of what we mean, Deel lets you organize users into groups like group admin, people manager, and viewer.

5. Provide ongoing training

Conduct regular training sessions for all employees to raise their awareness about new and emerging compliance risks. You can try simulating breaches to test their responses.

Compliance isn’t just about checking whether teams are processing data correctly. Also, ensure they’re aware of the possible consequences of security gaps to themselves and others and their rights and responsibilities as your legal employee. Some may be motivated to maintain IT compliance if they understand the penalties or see how issues affect the team.

6. Conduct regular audits and stress tests

Schedule annual or biannual tests to check your defences are working as they should be. Many businesses outsource this task to an expert service, which conducts an audit and attempts to break into your system.

Also, run drills with your team for situations like large-scale attacks and system outages. You can check the efficiency of your reporting and response processes and ensure teams know what to do.

7. Send devices pre-loaded with apps

Many teams lack the technical expertise required to set up encryption and security protocols on their devices. Manage this for them by sending equipment with the apps preconfigured.

IT procurement may find it challenging to handle setup for hundreds of employees across various locations. However, you can outsource this task. Deel IT lets workers select equipment from a pre-approved catalog and ships it to their address with all the apps and settings preloaded according to your needs.

See also: 10 Best Hardware Inventory Software to Streamline IT in 2025

8. Manage and monitor device security

Take employees out of the equation when managing security measures. You can ensure company devices are protected and avoid adding to your team’s workloads.

As we mentioned, Deel IT lets you preload devices with apps and security settings. This lets you manage updates so you can be sure cybersecurity software is still running at all times.

Deel IT also allows you to manage devices in real time with built-in risk monitoring. You can detect performance issues or suspicious activities as soon as they happen, giving you the best chance to respond before the problem escalates into a full compliance breach.

9. Follow a strict protocol for offboarding

When employees leave the company, ensure you revoke access and collect all company devices. This means they can’t log into the system after their end date.

Consider creating an offboarding checklist. HR and managers can follow it while they’re helping the worker prepare to leave the company and later, someone can check all the items have been ticked off.

Leading software providers should assist you with removing employees from the system. For example, Deel lets you initiate a termination, select the reason why, and track your progress during this period. Ex-employees may have access to accounts with personal details and records, but they can’t enter your system after the date you set.

Recovering the device can be more challenging, especially if workers are in different locations or refuse to cooperate. Deel IT can arrange collection as a neutral third party and wipe all the data and settings. You can then decide whether you’d like to reassign the device or put it into storage.

10. Develop standardized IT processes

Create an IT policy detailing all your employees’ rights and responsibilities. You can include the correct processes for:

• Signing up for accounts
• Adding information to the shared system
• Sending transfers via email
• Reporting software and hardware issues
• Returning devices

As you update or remove sections in the policy, ask employees to re-read the document. Global HR solutions let you send notifications and collect electronic signatures to verify everyone’s seen the changes. You can also check each team member’s status to see whether they’re yet to confirm.

Automating IT asset management can also help you standardize workflows. For instance, Deel’s software can take care of the entire device lifecycle from procurement and delivery through to recovery to minimize the risk of human error and guarantee compliance.

Why Deel IT is the best solution for compliance management

When managing distributed teams, the biggest obstacle is frequently maintaining IT compliance with all the relevant laws across locations. You must research and enforce policies everywhere you operate without full oversight.

Traditional ITAM services are often limited to specific jurisdictions, leaving gaps in your compliance strategy. You need a truly comprehensive global solution like Deel IT.

When you partner with us, your team can access:

• Full IT services across 130+ countries
• Total device lifecycle management
• End-to-end compliance automation
• Hardware and software asset tracking
• Delivery within 3-5 days
• Pre-configured apps and security settings
• Granular access controls
• Real-time risk monitoring
• Multi-factor authentication and advanced password settings
• AES-256 encryption and secure data storage
• Equipment collection and certified data erasure

Worried about gaps in your IT compliance? Book a demo now to see how Deel IT can help you identify and fix them.