What Does Compliance Look Like? (It’s Not Easy)

For businesses, one of the scariest threats out there is that of compliance fines for not holding up your end of the bargain with your customers’ data. But what goes into compliance, and what does it look like? We won’t be digging into the nitty-gritty of what these specific regulations require; rather, we’re performing a broad analysis of what businesses should be doing to ensure compliance, regardless of the protocol or the industry.

Some Common Core Principles

Even though there are plenty of industry-specific standards and regulations you need to comply with, these regulations usually have several core principles in common:

• Transparency - Your customers have a right to know what data you collect, how you use it, and who you share it with.
• Consent - Never collect data from customers (or worse, sell it) without their consent. This is especially the case with personal data or sensitive information.
• Data minimization - While having a lot of data on your customers can be a good thing for sales, marketing, and so on, only collect and retain data that you need, and only do so if you have a specific, legitimate purpose for holding on to it.
• Data security - This is honestly a no-brainer; if people are going to trust your business with their data, it’s your obligation to ensure it’s protected to the best of your ability. This means protecting data from unauthorized access, like a data breach.
• Individual Rights - Remember, you’re collecting the data of customers—people who have trusted your business—so the least you can do is respect their rights to collect, delete, and restrict what you do with their personal data.

Again, the requirements vary by industry, but most businesses (if not all) should anticipate adhering to regulations that do the above, at a bare minimum.

What You Can Do to Ensure Compliance

While the above might paint a broad picture of compliance, we assure you it’s much better to be safe than sorry.

We recommend that you take inventory of all the data your business collects, as well as what it’s used for and how it’s stored. Once you’ve done that, be sure to implement any security measures you’re lacking, whether they’re strong passwords, encryption, unified threat management, and endpoint protection. All employees should also be well-versed in your business’ data privacy policies and security expectations, so implement a training schedule that’s reinforced with regular reviews.

Taking data privacy seriously isn’t easy, but we have a solution that makes it a lot easier.

We Can Help You Protect Your Data

IT plays a significant role in compliance, specifically when it comes to data security.

All businesses collect personal information in some regard, whether it’s the personal information of their employees, the payment credentials of their customers, or the health insurance documentation employees need to receive care. You need to keep this data safe. Thankfully, you can do it with ease thanks to our security solutions.

To get started taking compliance seriously (and you should), give Preferred a call at 708-781-7110 today.