How the Unified Compliance Framework solves framework commonalities?

Imagine your organization has meticulously gathered and documented all the necessary evidence to achieve compliance with a specific regulatory framework. Now, as your business expands to a new location, you encounter a new set of regulations requiring similar evidence and additional new requirements. Without a streamlined process, you’d have to start the compliance process from scratch, dealing with fragmented and inefficient methods prone to errors due to manual efforts.

These challenges highlighted the need for a more cohesive solution, prompting the development of common control mapping and the Unified Compliance Framework (UCF) in 2004. As businesses grow and technological complexities increase, leveraging commonalities across different regulatory frameworks becomes a necessity rather than a choice.

This blog will guide you through the fundamentals of UCF and explain how it can help you save time and effort, allowing you to navigate the certification process more efficiently and effectively.

What is the Unified Compliance Framework?

The Unified Compliance framework is the largest commercially available and centralized compliance resource that harmonizes content from various standards and regulations into a single and simplified set of common controls.

This largest library database of interconnected compliance documents contains more than 100000 individual mandates and 10000 common controls along with 1000 mapped authority documents. It also has 250000 interconnected words and phrases in its dictionary.

How does the UCF work to identify framework commonalities?

It is the components of UCF that enable the streamlining and harmonizing of the commonalities among frameworks and work towards enhancing compliance efficiency.

Following are the components of UCF:

1. Common Controls Hub

The UCF common controls hub helps you identify specific control requirements that address multiple regulations simultaneously. The centralized common control repository helps minimize redundancy in the implementation process for organizations that are subject to various frameworks.

2. Authority documents

The authority documents are original compliance sources that form the foundation of the UCF. They contain audit best practices, contractual obligations, and other regulatory text from various standards, guidelines, and internal policies.

3. UCF Mapping

The UCF mapping enables the tagging of authority documents and the organization’s governance documents to common controls. The citations ie. the regulatory requirements or mandates within the authority documents are unified to create a common set of controls.

4. Compliance dictionary

The compliance dictionary by UCF facilitates harmonization of compliance requirements by offering standardized terminology across regulations. It eliminates any ambiguity caused by different languages and simplifies interpretation.

5. UCF Research

The UCF research enables users to search the database and understand the interconnectedness of authority documents to common controls. It helps organizations understand how regulatory requirements overlap.

6. Integration capabilities

The UCF enables integration with most GRC tools to minimize regulatory complexities and automate compliance processes.

Less stress, more success: Benefits of Unified Compliance Framework

The Unified Compliance framework eliminates the need to manually gather requirements for each regulation and start from scratch each time a new framework is introduced.

Look at the top 5 benefits of the UCF:

Minimizes implementation complexities

UCF consolidates multiple compliance requirements into a single source of truth for common controls and simplifies implementation. It eliminates the need for manually mapping controls and minimizes any duplicative efforts by providing a common language for organizations subject to more than one framework.

Saves time and costs

Organizations referring to the UCF for their compliance requirements can streamline processes and reduce any redundant work in compliance activities. It enables better resource allocation and optimization while allowing employees to focus on business-critical tasks.

Enhances decision making

UCF provides you with a centralized view of overlapping and individual requirements, enabling quicker implementation decisions. It also supports risk-based prioritization by facilitating controls analysis based on objectives and risks. Identifying blind spots and gaining comprehensive visibility help organizations understand the overall risk landscape and make thoughtful decisions.

Enables you to stay updated on regulations

UCF constantly updates its content to reflect changes in regulations and ensures that you get access to the latest version. It becomes your reliable source for any regulatory information and minimizes the need for manually tracking changes. The integration abilities with GRC tools also facilitate real-time alerts and notifications for compliance updates.

Facilitates scalability and growth

UCF facilitates scalability by enabling organizations to manage multiple frameworks as they expand into new markets. The common control mapping simplifies the process of adding new regulations to your compliance management system with minimal disruptions. It also supports seamless adaptation to the changing regulatory landscape for organizational growth.

How to implement the Unified Compliance Framework?

To implement the UCF, you need access to it and an understanding of the regulatory landscape. The tool’s automation capabilities will make things easier and provide you with cross-framework mapping.

Here are 7 steps to implement the UCF:

1. Identify your compliance requirements

Begin by assessing all regulatory needs relevant to your organization. Identify the frameworks your organization must comply with and the systems, processes, and people within the scope.  Identify the channels of sensitive information, such as networks or physical infrastructure, to align the requirements with your business context.

2. Get access to UCF tools

Once you have outlined your requirements, you need access to UCF tools such as the common controls hub and mapping features.

You can either subscribe to UCF for this or leverage a GRC tool that integrates with UCF.

If you opt for a GRC tool, the UCF plugin will mostly be pre-installed with necessary integrations facilitated through API keys.

3. Start the cross-mapping process

The next step is to utilize the common controls hub and identify overlaps. The UCF’s automation capabilities will help you pinpoint common controls when you add inputs for applicable regulatory frameworks. You can add or adjust controls to customize the mapping based on your needs and review the mapping to ensure accuracy.

4. Integrate with compliance programs

The next step is to integrate UCF into existing compliance programs through one of the two approaches – leveraging a GRC software, or referencing UCF to manually update the common control mapping documentation.   

If you are already using compliance management software, configure it to include UCF controls. Alternatively, update your compliance policies and documentation to incorporate UCF mapping and minimize any redundant controls.

5. Arrange for workforce training

Ensure that your employees understand how UCF works and how it has been customized for your organization. Arrange workforce training so that they comprehend their role in achieving and maintaining compliance. Mandatory security training may also be necessary for various compliance frameworks, ensuring stakeholders are aware of the required controls.

6. Implement monitoring mechanisms

You’ll need ongoing oversight to ensure that the controls are  performing as intended, which is why a continuous monitoring mechanism is needed. It helps you report on the real-time compliance posture and identify any areas where it is falling through the cracks. This enables proactive response and ensures that you stay on track. It is also required to ensure that the organization stays ever-compliant in the long run.

7. Continuously improve

Treat the process as iterative, conducting regular internal audits and risk assessments to drive ongoing improvements. Stay updated on any control modifications and updates from UCF to ensure your compliance program aligns with current and evolving requirements.

Examples of how unified compliance framework helps

Let’s look at 2 examples of how UCF makes it easier for organizations to manage multiple compliance frameworks:

Healthcare industry

Healthcare organizations are often subject to multiple regulations such as HIPAA, ISO 27001 and HITECH. The UCF helps harmonize the common controls across these frameworks.

For example, access controls, risk assessments, incident response plan, encryption requirements, training and awareness and physical security are common controls across these frameworks to protect sensitive information.

UCF will help the organization streamline the compliance efforts and avoid duplication of efforts when implementing these controls.

Tech Companies

Tech companies might need to comply with ISO 27001, SOC 2 and NIST to ensure the security, privacy and integrity of data. The UCF can help these companies save time and compliance costs by highlighting the overlaps.

Controls like access management, incident response, audit logging and monitoring and vendor management are common across these frameworks. In fact, SOC 2 and ISO 27001 have 90% overlap in controls.

Understanding the common controls can help expedite the process and make organizations audit-ready faster.

Difference between UCF and SCF

The Secure Controls Framework is a catalog of security and privacy controls from over 100 cybersecurity and data privacy regulations. The meta-framework or framework of frameworks as it is called, helps organizations set up and maintain strong cybersecurity practices to protect information assets. Moreover, it’s built by a community of cybersecurity professionals and GRC specialists and is an open-source project, free for use.

SCF is structured into domains and each domain has specific controls. These controls cover a range of areas such as access control, incident response and monitoring that organizations must implement to manage security risks.

While both SCF and UCF simplify control implementation for organizations, they differ in various aspects. Let’s compare these two to understand where the differences lie:

Basis	Unified Compliance Framework	Secure Controls Framework
Purpose	To simplify the implementation of multiple compliance standards by mapping common controls	To provide cybersecurity and privacy controls to build and maintain security and privacy programs.
Scope	Compliance management across various regulations	Implementation of security and privacy controls
Structure	Structured into various components such as common controls hub, authority documents, compliance dictionary and UCF mapping	Structured into categories or domains covering a range of controls
Content	Common control mapping across various frameworks	Detailed implementation guidance and controls for cybersecurity and privacy best practices.
Suitability	Suitable for organizations that manage compliance across multiple regulations	Suitable for organizations seeking to enhance privacy and security controls.

Challenges of the Unified Compliance Framework

While the UCF does make compliance management easier, the work involved is not without challenges. Sifting through mandates and citations and integrating UCF with your CMS can be particularly demanding at the ground level.

Let’s look at some of these UCF challenges:

Initial setup challenges

The initial setup for UCF requires a lot of customization to fit your organization’s unique needs. The mapping must be according to specific regulatory requirements which can be time-consuming and effort-intensive. For smaller organizations, the exercise can particularly be challenging as it puts stress on their limited resources.

Guidance, but not monitoring

The Unified Compliance Framework (UCF) offers valuable guidance on commonalities among different frameworks but does not provide mechanisms for monitoring these controls once they are implemented. To ensure controls function as intended and to gather evidence for audits, continuous testing and tracking are necessary. Tools such as Sprinto are essential for real-time monitoring and evidence collection.

Documentation, but not implementation

While the UCF provides extensive documentation, including data from mandates, citations, and control mappings, it focuses on documentation rather than implementation. To effectively implement common controls and maintain compliance, additional Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) tools are required.

Costs involved

Unlike SCF, UCF is not a free solution and involves subscription fees, training costs and other resources to integrate the framework. If you are operating with a limited budget, you may not be able to leverage the complete benefits of the framework and may even face resistance on budget approvals from top management.Note that these costs are in addition to the GRC tool costs that you’ll get.

Cross-map and cross-use controls with Sprinto

UCF is a comprehensive tool that provides guidance on common control mapping. But not every organization has the budget to get access to it or the expertise to understand how it works.  A consolidated solution that handles not just common control mapping, but also monitoring and evidence collection makes much more sense for such companies. Enter Sprinto.

Sprinto can help you get compliant across 20+ frameworks while helping you with cross-framework mapping. We take NIST as the baseline for our CCF (Common Control Framework) and magic mapping.

When you add inputs for applicable frameworks, you’ll see common controls automatically mapped to help you avoid any duplication of efforts. Watch this video to understand how this is done:

All this is coupled with automated control testing, in-built policy templates, training modules and automated evidence collection. Our customers have been leveraging the CCF and Sprinto’s automation capabilities to get audit-ready in weeks.

Read how Mesmerise achieved compliance with 4 frameworks and received their audit reports and certifications in just 60 days!

Watch Sprinto in action and kickstart your cross-compliance journey.

FAQs

How to choose between UCF and SCF?

If you are subject to broad compliance requirements and can benefit from common control mapping, you must choose UCF. If you are only focused on security and data privacy needs and do not have the budget for UCF, SCF can be a good choice.

What are the four products offered by UCF?

The UCF offers Common Control Hub, UCF Research, UCF Mapper and UCF API as its four products to simplify and harmonize compliance requirements.

Who can benefit from using UCF?

Organizations of all sizes and industries, especially the ones that are subject to overlapping compliance requirements can benefit from using the UCF. These include sectors like healthcare, technology and finance that have complex regulatory needs.

What are UCF authority documents?

UCF authority documents are official regulatory guidelines from which UCF derives its requirements and mandates. These authority documents serve as a reference to map common controls within the UCF.