For many small and mid-sized businesses in healthcare, finance, manufacturing, or education, compliance is not optional. Regulations like HIPAA, PCI-DSS, SOX, and others come with strict requirements and real consequences for falling short. But hiring a full-time Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) isn’t always realistic.

The good news is, you don’t need a full-time executive to stay on top of compliance. With the right systems, support, and approach, you can meet regulatory requirements and protect your business without breaking the budget.

Here’s how we recommend getting started:

1. Know Your Requirements in Plain Terms

The first step is understanding what you’re actually responsible for. Too often, businesses either underestimate the requirements or get overwhelmed by technical jargon. Work with a trusted advisor or legal/compliance partner to translate your obligations into clear action items.

Create a short list of the most critical controls and build your plan from there.

2. Assign Clear Ownership

Even without a CISO, someone on your team needs to be responsible for compliance. This could be your IT lead, operations manager, or another trusted staff member. What matters most is clarity. Assign specific roles for managing policies, reviewing logs, updating documentation, and responding to audits or incidents.

Avoid spreading responsibility across too many people. Accountability matters.

3. Document Everything

Regulators and auditors want to see proof, not just intentions. That means documenting your policies, tracking access controls, recording training efforts, and logging any security events or remediation steps.

Use centralized tools when possible and keep your documentation easy to update and share. Good records make audits smoother and reduce the risk of non-compliance.

4. Rely on Proven Frameworks

You don’t need to build your security and compliance plan from scratch. Industry frameworks like NIST, CIS Controls, or ISO 27001 can give you a solid foundation. They’re designed to map closely with most major regulations and can scale to match your business size.

Start with a lightweight version that fits your capacity and grow from there.

5. Use Outsourced Experts When Needed

You may not need a full-time CISO, but you might benefit from fractional security leadership or a virtual CISO (vCISO) arrangement. These services can provide expert guidance, help prepare for audits, or even run point on incident response, all without the cost of a senior in-house hire.

 

Many MSPs and consulting firms also offer tools and checklists tailored for compliance-heavy industries.

6. Make Compliance a Routine, Not a Project

Compliance shouldn’t only come up before audits or contract renewals. Build small, repeatable tasks into your quarterly workflows: things like user access reviews, policy refreshes, and phishing simulations. This steady rhythm reduces the stress and risk of scrambling when the stakes are high.

Final Thoughts

Staying compliant without a CISO is possible. It takes focus, structure, and the right partners, but many growing businesses are managing it successfully. Whether you’re navigating HIPAA, PCI, or other industry rules, the goal is to keep things simple, repeatable, and well-documented.

If you’re not sure where to start, we’re happy to help.