What is Data Compliance?
Data compliance can be described as adhering or complying to national or international rules or norms to protect any individual’s information. This usually refers to a company, businesses, or government that handles plenty of customers or clients’ sensitive information.
Data compliance refers to fulfilling the requisites set in legal standards. Data security, however, comprises everything involving data, from the process of collecting records to the technology that handles the information, and describes every step of how to guard data, especially sensitive data like customer’s financial reports. Thus, being data compliant does not equate to being secure with an individual’s data.
What is the significance of data compliance?
The reason data compliance came into existence is to, primarily, protect the public’s data, and, respect the public’s privacy. With this to be as the foremost basis or ground any human being, company, or action must stand on, specific laws have been put to place, not only in state governments but nationally and internationally as well.
In the US, there are federal as well as state regulations for data compliance in order to secure the citizen’s data. In Europe, a law called General Data Protection Regulation (or the GDPR) handles data compliance and data protection of customers/corporations doing businesses within the European Union.
How does data compliance help companies and businesses grow?
With the current generation booming in the online world, most businesses purely work and rely on the Internet for any customer transaction, customer growth, networking, and prosperity. Keeping this in mind, to win customers, a company’s reliability matters the most. This can be achieved only when customers can trust the company.
One way to gain that trust is by securing the customer’s data. With current trends, fraudulence in the online world has taken over many lives. Sharing customer data, misusing customer data, and identity theft are a few of the many violations possible with insecure data, not understanding the sensitivity behind a customer’s information, and non-adherence to data protection.
Data compliance ensures businesses and companies adhere to existing norms and standards of data protection to win customer trust and support.
What are the types of data compliance standards?
To understand the types of data compliance standards, one must be aware of the types of data. To be consistent with the International Organization of Standardization (or the ISO), any company or corporate must adhere to certain “data management systems” to ensure data protection of clients, investors or stakeholders, and customers.
These systems are called the Information Security Management Systems (or the ISMS), which, per ISO, can be described as “a systematic approach to managing sensitive company information so that it remains secure. It includes people, processes, and IT systems by applying a risk management process.”
What can be done to ensure that the data compliance standards are being followed?
To ensure that a company is adhering to data compliance standards, the company could partner with a compliance consultant or employ any compliance consultant personnel. Compliance consulting firms like Foresite are slowly growing in the market due to the need to ensure legality requirements. A career in compliance consulting, which is of a high profile nature, is a booming career wherein the job responsibilities include:
- To explicitly look into every standard and ensure that the business is following each one.
- To analyze the standards and norms that need to be followed, as well as processes to ensure that these are fulfilled.
- To report any non-compliance.
- To maintain customer support and trust.
- To ensure there will be no legal problems faced by the company concerning data compliance.
