Compliance review is an internal check to see whether a company’s conduct matches legal and regulatory requirements. In cyber security, this means examining policies, system settings, logs, disclosures, data handling, and approval records to confirm that technical operations align with what the law and the company’s own promises require.
It matters because many security failures become legal failures when controls are weak or poorly documented. A product may be secure enough to resist intrusion but still fail a compliance review if access controls, consent flows, retention rules, or incident records do not meet requirements. Defenders use compliance reviews to find gaps early, reduce liability, and prove due care. Attackers and investigators often look for the opposite: missing audit trails, inconsistent notices, or repeated violations that suggest the organization’s real practices do not match its stated controls.