Complete Guide to Compliance Engineering

Enterprise Compliance Engineering Methodology

Phase 1: Regulatory Landscape Analysis

Begin by establishing comprehensive understanding of applicable regulatory requirements:

Framework Identification Catalog all regulations governing your organization's operations:

• Industry-specific: PCI-DSS (payments), HIPAA (healthcare), FedRAMP (government)
• Geography-specific: GDPR (EU), CCPA (California), PIPEDA (Canada)
• Certification standards: SOC 2, ISO 27001, ISO 27017, ISO 27018
• Contractual obligations: Customer-specific security requirements

Control Mapping Map high-level regulatory requirements to specific technical controls:

## PCI-DSS Requirement 3.4: Render PAN Unreadable

**Technical Controls:**
- CTRL-001: Encrypt all cardholder data at rest using AES-256-GCM
- CTRL-002: Implement tokenization for PAN storage (never store raw PAN)
- CTRL-003: Key management via HSM with quarterly rotation
- CTRL-004: Access controls limit decryption to authorized services

**Verification Methods:**
- Automated database scans detect plaintext PAN
- Encryption verification tests run in CI/CD
- Access control tests verify unauthorized decryption fails

Requirement Traceability Matrix Establish bidirectional traceability: requirement → control → implementation → test → evidence

Phase 2: Compliance-Driven Architecture

Design system architecture to satisfy compliance controls natively:

Separation of Duties SOC 2 requires separation between development and production access. Architect IAM policies that enforce role-based access control at infrastructure level—not application layer.

Data Classification & Protection GDPR and CCPA mandate data classification and protection measures. Implement data classification taxonomy at schema level:

interface UserData {
  userId: string              // Public
  email: string              // PII (GDPR/CCPA)
  paymentMethod: string      // Sensitive (PCI-DSS)
  medicalRecords: string     // PHI (HIPAA)
}

// Encryption applied based on classification
// Access controls enforced based on classification
// Retention policies applied based on classification

Audit Trail Architecture All compliance frameworks require comprehensive audit trails. Architect centralized logging with tamper-evident storage:

• All data access logged with user identity, timestamp, action
• Logs stored in write-once-read-many (WORM) storage
• Log integrity verified via cryptographic signatures
• Automated alerting on suspicious access patterns

Phase 3: Automated Compliance Verification

Implement continuous compliance testing that runs with every deployment:

# compliance-verification.yml
name: Compliance Verification

on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  pci-dss-verification:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Verify no plaintext PAN in databases
        run: npm run verify:pci-data-protection

      - name: Verify encryption implementation
        run: npm run test:encryption-compliance

      - name: Verify access controls
        run: npm run test:access-control-compliance

  soc2-verification:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Verify audit logging completeness
        run: npm run verify:audit-logs

      - name: Verify access control separation
        run: npm run test:access-separation

Phase 4: Automated Evidence Generation

Implement evidence generation as automated build output:

// Generate compliance evidence package
async function generateAuditEvidence(framework: 'SOC2' | 'PCI-DSS' | 'HIPAA') {
  const evidence = {
    framework,
    generatedAt: new Date(),
    controls: []
  }

  for (const control of frameworkControls[framework]) {
    evidence.controls.push({
      controlId: control.id,
      requirement: control.description,
      implementation: await getImplementationEvidence(control.id),
      testing: await getTestResults(control.id),
      continuousMonitoring: await getMonitoringData(control.id)
    })
  }

  return generatePDF(evidence) // Auditor-ready evidence package
}