When the customers provide their sensitive information to organizations, they confer them with personal data which can be utilized against them if it falls into unauthorized hands. That’s the reason why data privacy is there to protect all those customers but also the organizations and their employees from various security hijacks.

Acquiescing with the data privacy regulations is essential not just because the information is sensitive and can be misused in the case of data breach occurs, but also because there are regulations that enforce this compliance.

Throughout this article, we will provide you the basic information on complying with data privacy regulations. However, if you want to find out all the information, then go through this article to get enough knowledge to stay safe side of data privacy compliance.

Why Data Privacy is Essential?

The major reason why organizations comply with the data privacy rules is to evade fines. Companies that do not implement these regulations can be fined up to tens of millions of dollars and even get a 20-year penalty. However, there are so many reasons why you require taking data privacy seriously, not just because the law says so.

Are Data Breaches Affecting Your Business?       

When you comply with data privacy rules, you need to meet some legal needs. One of the major requirements is implementing strong security safeguards to ensure the protection of data privacy.

With such measures, the number of security threats will significantly decrease the business won’t suffer a loss of revenue. The average total cost of a data seize is $3.92 million, which can easily be bypassed with well-placed rules.

How to secure your Customers’ Privacy?

As we already mentioned earlier, a data breach can lead to theft of valuable customer data, which can utilize all of that critical information to commit various crimes such as discovering theft and credit card fraud.

Handling and Enhancing Brand Value

You require evading data breaches, as they can seriously harm a company’s reputation and brand value. When customers voluntarily provide their information to companies, they expect it to be well-secured. If it is not, customers will lose all trust they had in the organizations and brand, which will decrease brand value.

How does it support the code of ethics?

Most companies have a code of ethics in place. Even those who don’t have it pursue at least some ethical practices. Without this, they would not be able to stay in business. One of those policies states that confidential data requirements are to be handled responsibly and only utilized for business purposes.

It Provides the Ambitious Advantage

Many people are concerned about how their information is being utilized and handled. According to the surveys, 79% of the people are very or concerned about how the companies are utilizing their information. If the business complies with data privacy rules, this will provide you a competitive advantage over our companies that don’t take the matter as seriously.

How to ensure that the business complies with rules?

If your organization hasn’t already set up a systematic compliance effort, it’s time to do it right away. Even though it will take you time and effort, it’s something that needs to be done as soon as possible.

Develop a compliance strategy

You can’t hope to accomplish anything without a good overall compliance strategy. This strategy needs to have data privacy compliance at its core while also being comprehensive, measurable, and integrated. You can develop it with a high-level set of principles that will be followed with the appropriate documentation. Make sure to define all measures that need to be taken to protect personal data.

Hire compliance subject matter experts

Since there are a plethora of regulations that require compliance, it’s almost impossible to keep track of them all. That is why there are experts trained in the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and HIPAA (The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) regulations.

These people are called subject matter experts (SMEs) and you can either hire or train one whose only job will be to develop legally compliant policies and practices. With a dedicated SME, you can be sure that you’re always complying with regulations.

Make an inventory of all sensitive personal information

Whenever personal data is collected, it needs to be properly tagged and inventoried. Your company also needs to provide a tracking method for all data that will make it easier to locate and protect. All of this needs to be in accordance with recommended and legal standards.

Establish policies and procedures for data protection

Organizations that comply with data privacy regulations have to ensure integrity, confidentiality, and data availability with physical, technical, and administrative safeguards. These safeguards need to be effective in detecting and stopping unauthorized access to data. It’s also vital to constantly monitor, assess, and update information security to make sure new threats can be met and dealt with properly and efficiently.

Have a comeback plan for marketing with breaches

Even if you adhere to all compliance policies, your system can’t be completely protected from data breaches and cyber-attacks. That is why every organization needs to have an effective response plan for data breaches as well as employees who are trained on these breach response plans.

Save all Your documentation

As we already mentioned, all compliance processes and plans need to have proper documentation. It’s important to keep this documentation readily available with a good content management system. You should also have an employee who is responsible for managing these documents.

Be ready to provide proof of compliance

It’s not enough for you and your employees to know the organization is data privacy compliant. You need to be ready to show proof of compliance to all internal and external queries. Make this proof readily unrestricted and easily accessible in the document and report forms to anyone who wants to see it.

Your organization also needs to have a set process for documenting non-compliance and an escalation procedure. Additionally, you require to verify that you’re constantly supporter through auditing, monitoring, and the use of controls.