Organizations faced a number of changes to reach and maintain government compliance in 2024.
In some cases, the year saw government agencies rolling out new rules that introduce more complexity, while in other cases more clarity and simplification was provided for both decision makers and IT staff.
SEC kicks the year off with a bang
Perhaps the biggest government regulation release of the year came in its first days.
While most admins were still sleeping off their New Years celebrations, the SEC was formally implementing new rules around data incident disclosures.
The regulations, formalized late in the previous year following yet another rash of high-profile data breaches and network infiltrations, greatly tightened the requirements on when and what organizations are required to disclose following the occurrence of a network intrusion or a ransomware incident.
The aim is to both improve the transparency and response time to data breaches and, hopefully, allow other companies to learn about the incident and protect themselves from supply chain attacks, an increasingly common occurrence.
Experts noted, however, that complying with the new regulations likely means big changes to the way executives and network defenders approach incident response and ransomware disclosures.
The regulations were also seen as a driving factor in growing the market for cybersecurity insurance plans that help to cover the costs of responding to data breach incidents and the possible fallout from fines implemented by the SEC under the new regulations.
In turn, those insurance providers are also implementing stricter requirements for companies when issuing policies and assessing premium costs.
High-profile incidents bring call for new regulations
In some cases, major incidents made for calls to tighten up regulatory rules.
The July outage at security vendor CrowdStrike caused widespread outages in both the private and public sector, sending critical industries such as air travel into chaos and in turn affecting millions of users.
This lead some in the industry to called for tighter regulations and requirements on endpoint security providers such as CrowdStrike. The reasoning: under modern network and service infrastructures, endpoint security is essential for basic operation and, as such, vendors should be liable to make sure they maximize uptime and protect against outages and security incidents.
Pentagon streamlines cybersecurity requirements
Not every government regulation development made things more difficult for organizations. Contractors who work with the U.S. Department of Defense got some welcome clarity in what the Pentagon requires of its private sector partners.
The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) update was designed to give a clear and fast method and outline for cybersecurity requirements at outside organizations that do business with the DoD and its associated agencies.
Given the Pentagon is one of the biggest government purchasers of outside contracts, and the highly sensitive nature of many of the projects associated with those contracts, the rules will hopefully reduce both compliance headaches and the exposure organizations face for attacks from foreign threat actors.
Big breaches, bigger fines
It was not just regulations that were updated over the course of 2024. Governments also increased their efforts to crack down on violators and impose significant fines on those who are breached as a result of their carelessness.
Among the more notable penalties issued this year were fines levied against Geico and Travelers Insurance for their respective data breaches.
In each case, authorities in New York found that the insurance providers failed to provide adequate cybersecurity protections on their respective networks, allowing threat actors to ransom off customer data.
The more aggressive pursuit of fines against companies who fall short of their cybersecurity obligations could for organizations to take a closer look at their internal policies and protections to protect user data.
Looking forward to 2025
Without a doubt, the biggest factor impacting the cybersecurity regulations and compliance sector over the coming year will be the transition to a new presidential administration.
During its first term, the Trump administration was notoriously business friendly in its policies, which is likely to continue and would almost certainly lead to many government regulations either being relaxed or removed outright.
Following the election, Trump has sought to integrate his transition team with tech tycoon Elon Musk, himself no fan of government regulations.
The next administration could see the federal government dramatically change course on a number of key areas around cybersecurity.
