With the emergence and imposition of acts like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), companies worldwide have started taking compliance with data privacy and protection laws and regulations much more seriously. This comes as no surprise since the potential damage – both in terms of penalties and brand reputation – is vast, especially in cases where a business faces certain legal issues regarding misuse of consumer data, security breach, data loss, or other similar scenarios.
The aforementioned laws and regulations are continuously being updated and new ones emerge on a regular basis, which is why it is critical for organizations to always stay compliant with them.
Here are 4 surefire steps toward achieving this.
Ensure Your Privacy Policy is Always Updated
Your privacy policy should be the first thing to be mindful about. Most companies tend to write up their policy once and then forget about updating it. Be sure to keep yours up-to-date so it meets the latest data privacy laws and regulatory standards/guidelines.
Every business should have a privacy policy that is:
- Up to date
- Concise
- Transparent
- Easily comprehensible
- Easily accessible
We also recommend considering the following best practice tips for creating a valid privacy policy:
- Always include truthful information and data about your company’s location, contact info, staff members, etc;
- Be as clear, thorough and transparent as possible about what data your organization collects, how this data pieces are used, with whom you might share this data, how long the retention periods for keeping the data are, and so on;
- Be clear about your customer/user’s rights regarding their data.
Have a Solid Data Governance and Mapping Plan
Data management is among the most critical aspects of staying compliant with the latest data privacy laws. You need to develop a strong and streamlined data governance plan and data mapping framework so all your staff members have a firm grasp of how data pieces move across your infrastructure and communication channels.
As the GDPR, for example, requires companies to handle and secure consumer data in a fair manner, especially if they own this data, these businesses must ensure their data monitoring, tracking, and managing is always on point. Every piece of data and its journey should be mapped since it can also help with timely identification of sections that could potentially lead to severe data compliance issues.
The data managers and controllers must always rely on a lawful basis, only then can processing operations be performed the proper way. This legal basis depends several factors, including:
- What type of personal data is being processed
- the purposes for data processing
- Geolocation of the company/customer, etc
Take Care of Data Retention
As data privacy laws and regulations get updated and stricter on a regular basis, data retention is something that needs to be addressed and taken care of with high levels of priority. With the evolution of the cloud-based landscape, the data security concerns become bigger by the day, especially in terms of where the user data is stored, how it is managed and by whom, how and why it is processed and for how long pieces of data should be retained.
The problem is that even the biggest players on the cloud service market confide in 3rd party vendors for certain tasks in terms of handling various types of data, which can lead to potential issues for the end user.
Even the cloud providers themselves often fail to provide adequate levels of data compliance for certain industries. Further issues may occur if the service provider refuses to be transparent about the exact ways they are following data security standards or data retention policies.
In order to mitigate these risks, it is recommended that organizations create their own data management strategies and/or outsource certain aspects of data governance, and always approach these data privacy components with granularity and tactfulness in mind. For example, emailing platforms are still the most used communication channels that businesses use on a daily basis. When it comes to email-based data security and compliance, it is probably a good idea to invest in a solid email archiving solution, a gap-proof data governance strategy, and have a good email retention policy in place.
Emails are among the most common channels through which data breaches occur, while they also tend to be extremely important in potential legal cases, which is why proper management of sensitive email-based information and data is critical.
Have an Effective Disaster Plan in Place
Even if a business takes care of all the aspects of being compliant with data privacy laws, it is always a good idea to have a disaster plan. Be sure that you keep and make accessible all the necessary and sensitive data and documentation. It should be readily available with sound content management and retrieval system.
Bear in mind that, even when you achieve compliance with all the required policies, it doesn’t mean that the apps and services your system deploys are breach-proof. This is where an adequate response plan comes into play.
Summary
The key to running a successful business ROI-wise is to first take care of all the technicalities and those boring tasks that don’t really seem fun nor productive. But it is those tasks exactly that lay the groundwork for the safe and sound infrastructure that can yield progress, revenue, and innovation.
If the laws and regulations regarding data privacy are there for a reason, and the reason is to keep the consumers safe, then it is your job to adhere to those laws and do due diligence in that department as well. Only then will your business be able to thrive in this exciting modern business environment.
Author Bio:
Damian is a business consultant and a freelance blogger from New York. He writes about the latest tech solutions and marketing insights. Follow him on Twitter for more articles
