With an alarming number of security breaches and data loss this past year, maintaining compliance with industry regulations is a top concern for IT pros and senior leadership. So why are IT departments leaving compliance and security processes to chance? (Particularly those in highly sensitive industries like finance, healthcare and insurance.)

We recently polled 313 IT professionals in the U.S. to understand how prepared organizations are to undergo compliance audits. We found that over half (59 percent) of all respondents feel unprepared. Some even feel they are facing an impending disaster. While IT is charged with keeping business processes smooth and secure, they have little control over all file movements across an organization and insight into operations. To help regain control over compliance requirements, IT should consider these five steps:

1. Prepare for audits with centralized audit logs and reports for file transmission.
2. Ensure the file you sent is the same as the one that is received.
3. Integrate all of your IT and security systems.
4. Never grant external users access to your trusted network.
5. Think through the entire file lifecycle and ensure personal data is protected.

These five steps are easily completed with a robust, automated managed file transfer (MFT) solution. MFT provides transparent movement of files and strengthens related IT processes through scalability, reliability, failover, and disaster recovery. With the right MFT solution in place IT pros can rest easy knowing they can enforce governance when it comes to the transfer of sensitive information.

This will come as a relief for half of IT pros (46 percent) who would choose to have a root canal procedure, work over Christmas, live without electricity for a week, or eat a live jellyfish if it meant avoiding an audit. Without an MFT solution, companies run the risk of violating a growing number of statutes and regulations designed to protect sensitive data from being breached. Don’t let compliance haunt your dreams and find out how to successfully survive an audit here.