In general, compliance means conforming to a rule, such as a specification, policy, standard or law. Regulatory compliance describes the goal that corporations or public agencies aspire to in their efforts to ensure that personnel are aware of and take steps to comply with relevant laws and regulations. Due to the increasing number of regulations and need for operational transparency, organizations are increasingly adopting the use of consolidated and harmonized sets of compliance controls. ‘This approach is used to ensure that all necessary governance requirements can be met without the unnecessary duplication of effort and activity from resources.
There are a number of regulations such as SOX, FDA(21CFR part 11), GLBA, FISMA, and HIPAA. In some cases other compliance frameworks (such as COBIT) or standards (NIST) inform on how to comply with the regulations.