Compliance: Data Privacy Best Practices

A well-developed and well-implemented compliance program can help companies adhere to data laws and regulations concerning their business operations. Most importantly, it helps you protect your critical data and avoid pitfalls related to compliance penalties and hefty fines. When implementing your data privacy policy, make sure you follow a zero-trust approach, which limits access to only those with the right credentials.

In addition to a zero-trust approach, you can also maximize security by following certain compliance best practices. We’ve put together a list of data privacy best practices that can ensure strong data protection for all your critical data. Make sure you follow them all to incorporate your compliance program the right way.

Download our compliance checklist for a quick overview of compliance needs.

Use Compliant Software Tools 

Since IT service providers are business associates to organizations, they can be held liable for a security breach. To prevent this from happening, IT teams and MSPs must adhere to all compliance regulations without fail. Even when all other cybersecurity best practices are followed, outdated software tools could expose you to unexpected risks in many ways.

Cybercriminals can easily exploit software tools and applications that are non-compliant with regulations. When a data breach occurs, it could lead to severe monetary losses for the organization. MSPs that use non-compliant tools face the risk of losing their reputation in the market. To make things worse, organizations and MSPs that do not adhere to compliance regulations are also likely to face heavy penalties and fines from regulatory authorities.

To avoid all that, you need to pay attention to the provisions for software tools under the regulations that apply to you and take adequate measures to ensure they are up to date.

Extend Communication Surveillance 

With the rise in technological advancements, communication now occurs on multiple platforms using different devices and applications. The recent increase in remote and hybrid work environments has made this even more challenging by facilitating communication across different locations. In this scenario, you cannot limit your surveillance to just emails. You need to extend your surveillance to multiple data streams including texts, phone calls, video conferencing, etc. Moreover, this requires sophisticated tools since legacy systems are typically inadequate to handle this level of surveillance.

Invest in Compliant Cloud Technologies 

With workforces scattered across multiple locations, organizations cannot continue to solely rely on on-premises data management solutions. Cloud-based solutions, on the other hand, offer easy access to data without the need for heavy maintenance. Organizations today require great flexibility and agility while also being able to cut down on costs.

Cloud technology offers the best solution for all these business needs. When you implement cloud-based compliance solutions, your business can operate with greater agility. You can also quite easily scale up or down based on your organization’s needs. Also, when your data storage needs increase, you won’t have to invest heavily in additional infrastructure for on-premises data storage.

Use Machine Learning to Facilitate Human Learning 

With the volume of business data increasing with every passing day, data laws regarding its maintenance evolve in tandem as well. Currently, compliance teams assess the latest regulations, incorporate them into their program and offer training to ensure employees understand the rules and abide by them. However, this process doesn’t address the actual compliance deficiencies within an organization.

With the incorporation of machine learning, compliance training is all set to be revolutionized in 2021. With machine learning, sophisticated compliance tools can provide instant alerts about compliance issues, which will help triangulate these issues and identify compliance hotspots.

Develop Specific Work-From-Home Policies 

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies relied on the security offered by their workplaces when it comes to restricting access. This is no longer a possibility in today’s remote working environments as companies have had to swiftly apply new processes to ensure employees can work from home whilst adhering to regulations. This is why you need to formulate specific work-from-home policies for all employees.

When developing these policies, make sure you assess various compliance guidelines to ensure they address regulatory obligations for employees working from home. This process also involves regularly assessing the vulnerabilities in your system, ensuring content from all key communication channels is being ingested for analysis and providing adequate training to people who handle sensitive information. You also need to increase the level of engagement with supervised persons who are working remotely.

How IT Glue Can Help 

As a leading cloud-based software company, we understand the importance of information security. IT Glue helps secure your world with our SOC 2-compliant documentation platform that features an immutable audit trail, multifactor authentication and next-generation password management engine — all of which are fully integrated and linked with all your documentation.

To see how IT Glue can ensure data privacy best practices, request a demo.

Check out our Quick Start Guide to Data Privacy and Compliance eBook for an overview of the steps needed to ensure your business adheres to data privacy compliance policies.