Secure, Smart, Automated, and Privacy-Preserving Cybersecurity Policy Compliance Framework for Sensitive Data Protection

Abstract

Cybersecurity regulatory and compliance frameworks such as NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5, the HIPAA Security Rule, and the GDPR define essential security and privacy obligations for healthcare information systems and their supporting infrastructures. Despite their critical role, compliance assurance in healthcare is predominantly manual and centered on periodic, point-in-time assessments, relying on human interpretation of regulatory requirements and fragmented evidence collection. As healthcare ecosystems evolve toward decentralized systems and extensive third-party participation, there is a growing need for compliance mechanisms that enable continuous assurance, verifiable accountability, and privacy-preserving enforcement across organizational boundaries. This paper proposes SSAP-CPCF, a Secure, Smart, Automated, and Privacy-Preserving Cybersecurity Policy Compliance Framework that integrates permissioned blockchain orchestration, LLM-assisted regulatory interpretation with human validation, and zero-knowledge proof-based verification. The framework explicitly encodes regulatory authority, assessor oversight, and multi-party approval into its protocol design, ensuring that automation enforces, rather than replaces, governance structures. SSAP-CPCF treats compliance as an enforceable system property by binding assessments to vendor-declared obligations and enforcing approval and oversight requirements at the ledger level, ensuring integrity, auditability, and separation of authority. A prototype implemented on a multi-organization Hyperledger Fabric network demonstrates the feasibility of privacy-preserving, ledger-enforced compliance automation in realistic multi-stakeholder settings.