Why Data Compliance Is Super Important

Data Compliance and Why It’s Super Important

Clients and employees that interact with your company carry a plethora of personal data with them. It is your company’s obligation to protect that confidential data in accordance with local and international legislation.

There’s a white-hot focus on cyber-security and how organizations handle, process, store, and dispose of sensitive data after a slew of high-profile cyber-attacks, and proof that cyber-attacks cost on average over $3 million per firm.

Businesses must comply with extensive data protection requirements and standards to conduct business with target consumers. Furthermore, these data security compliance criteria are updated more regularly than previously.

Ensuring that each requirement is satisfied may be difficult and time-consuming. However, there are tactics you may use to assist you in satisfying all of the guidelines and specifications you’re responsible for.

What is Data Compliance?

Data compliance is the process of adhering to numerous standards and requirements to ensure the safety and accessibility of regulated data, such as clients’ personally identifiable information. Data compliance guarantees that sensitive data is protected from unauthorized access. Another critical aspect of data compliance is keeping track of what sort of data is saved, how much is held, and how an organization maintains the data throughout its lifespan.

What is Data Security?

Organizations’ data security refers to how your company manages the sensitive data it receives daily, from consumer credit card information to staff addresses and phone numbers. Your company will be expected to keep this information safe and secure while adhering to data privacy rules and regulations at the local, national, and international scales.

To develop a trusted connection with clients and consumers worldwide, your company must have data security. With so much business being done online these days, your consumers need to know that their personal information is heavily safeguarded.

Why Data Compliance is Very Important

Information is very critical in decision-making, reliability, and continuous. If your organization’s data security is compromised, it may destroy your organization’s reputation and may result in a corporate collapse.

Data security is a crucial building component for consumer trust and confidence. Various levels of information compliance are necessary for your organization, depending on the scale of your organization. Data compliance is essential for your business as it helps you avoid data breaches of confidential material such as financial data, social security numbers, and home addresses.

If you want to offer products or services to businesses today, your company needs to pass IT audits. Data compliance allows your business to remain resilient and adaptable when you spend time designing and recording protocols for how your organization manages sensitive data, protects individual privacy, and reacts to cybersecurity incidents.

As your company expands, it’s critical to analyze every area of your operations and evaluate how suggested changes may alter your overall risk, so you can establish data protection systems, procedures, and policies to address those concerns as they arise.

While it is essential to prove to auditors that your organization is compliant with industry regulations on data security, it is also vital to remember that sustaining an information security adherence program is for your organization’s benefit. Employing a methodical approach to data compliance will reduce the chances of your company’s and client’s data from getting exposed. The approach involves regularly examining your potential threats, the security of your organization’s surroundings and the efficiency of your data compliance procedures.

How Can You Ensure Data Compliance?

There are several things you can do to ensure that your organization stays compliant with data protection regulations, including:

Maintaining Records of Data Security protocols and Audit Reports

Data compliance and audit records will help you ensure that no one individual has access to specific information about your company’s compliance operations. Without such a record, your company may be in the dark, increasing the risk that an audit would reveal gaps in your information compliance and security procedures.

This compliance documentation will also function as a demonstration of your business’s sincere efforts to abide by each set of rules. Data compliance rules allow enforcers to ease penalties for companies with excellent compliance processes in place or are actively striving to develop one.

To pass an assessment, you must show an auditor that you are committed to information security requirements. Auditors will require extensive records to determine if the procedures you put in place are sufficient to secure the data you store or handle. Working with the criteria of auditors in mind can help you stay focused on the most critical topics.

MicroXpress organizes, categorizes, and preserves your compliance documentation so you can find and see them fast. It also keeps track of your compliance operations so that auditors can see what compliance requirements your company has adhered to.

Delegate One Individual to Manage your Security Programs

Your data compliance and security process requires a single point of contact to oversee all moving parts. This individual should have direct access to leaders and the power and credibility to persuade people within the organization to adhere to data compliance requirements.

This job is necessary for firms under GDPR, but it is essential in any organization beholden to any data protection and compliance rules. A Data Protection Officer (DPO) is a security executive necessary for firms that handle large volumes of data.

Even though GDPR doesn’t compel your firm to employ a Data Protection Officer, your businesses will benefit from having one.

Employ a Common Controls Framework

(CCF) is a comprehensive collection of control criteria derived from a broad range of data privacy and security standards. Using a CCF in your organization will help you fulfill data compliance standards while reducing the danger of being “over-controlled.

Adopting a CCF centered on your organization’s customized security is an excellent strategy to lessen your organization’s operational disturbance. Putting safety first and aligning your security-focused policies to compliance standards can help you meet a variety of security accreditation, standards, and requirements. With slight variances in how you create proof and how auditors examine your surroundings, most frameworks contain the same basic security principles.

A CCF helps you and the auditors through existing compliance evaluations. This central framework also allows your organization to quickly figure out gaps in your other data compliance frameworks that you may adhere to in the future. You can analyze your existing compliance and avoid auditor charges on readiness evaluations. This standard framework lets you assess your current status more precisely and allows you to adapt and extend into other security accreditations and criteria.

MicroXpress offers your organization a set of example controls for many widely used data compliance frameworks. These controls are related to program criteria giving a quick start method for your company. Reach out to MicroXpress to learn more.

Ensure your Data Compliance Procedures are Up-to-Date

The security of personal information is at the core of these rules. So, in addition to having a solid security compliance procedure in place, ensure you have current data compliance techniques in place. These data compliance techniques are essential for reducing the risk of a data breach at your company.

If your business’s data protection and management procedures are outdated, keeping up-to-date data security and compliance requirements designed with today’s technology in mind will be considerably challenging.

Conventional data storage options are less efficient, putting your data and business at risk. It’s also crucial to regularly check your data security and management methods to verify that they meet current compliance requirements.

You must adapt your policies, processes, and other measures that safeguard and maintain your data assets as rules, your company, the technology you use, your staff, and your clients evolve.

Data protection legislation is now in flux, and you may anticipate guidelines and frameworks governing IT compliance to alter in response.

MicroXpress and other compliance operations companies can help you swiftly build up a data compliance program and maintain your internal control systems.

Bottom Line

In 2021, various states and other nations passed or amended data privacy legislation, bringing substantial changes to the data privacy landscape. With the implementation dates for these legislations rapidly approaching, you should expect this tendency to continue until 2022. Businesses should plan for compliance activities to account for changes to existing compliance requirements.

With additional changes, such as the recently amended GLBA Safeguards regulation that took effect on January 10, 2022, the time to comply with the privacy standards is quickly running out. Businesses should determine if privacy laws and regulations apply to them and create a compliance plan. Fortunately, many companies have already gone through the painstaking process of complying with the CCPA and GDPR. We urge your organization to work with privacy consultants to review adherence to privacy notices and establish or update policy and protocols for responding to client inquiries. Although the compliance deadlines may seem far away, we recommend that your organization budget for such actions and start planning immediately.

If your organization wants to hop on the bandwagon of ensuring they are data compliant, reach out to us at MicroXpress to find out how we can help you keep up with data compliance regulations.

Thanks to Kenny and the team at Velocity IT, an IT company in Dallas who are great friends of MicroXpress.