It cannot be stressed enough: personal information is property the consumer owns. As such, organisations need to handle personal information with a certain duty of care. To ensure the protection of personal information, many organisations have employed the services of Data Protection Officers (DPOs).
Not only that, data privacy certifications are now being offered to help DPOs develop and implement privacy programme networks, create company vision, and measure performance. Data privacy certifications are also designed to help create a solid foundation for privacy program governance.
Nowadays, privacy compliance has become a more complex task. For starters, companies need to consider what’s best for the consumer as they handle personal data. At the same time, they need to also know how to accommodate the consumer and any rights they might exercise under different privacy regulations.
In other words, organisations need to prioritise creating a “culture of privacy,” in the same way anti-corruption activists emphasised the relevance of culture compliance in the 2010. Understandably, a culture of security and privacy is expected to become the watchword for 2020.
A culture of privacy promotes important changes in the policies, processes, and corporate awareness of privacy. When there are any changes in the policies, procedure, and corporate culture, the compliance function is deemed crucial. When said goals are translated into capabilities organisations need to get done, the following are considered important:
Data Management
The regulation covers certain types of information that are within the scope of the Data Privacy Law. This includes photos, Internet search history, names, email addresses, audio recordings, biometric data, and many more. This also includes any information that can be reasonably associated with a certain person.
The most basic compliance capability is a simple understanding of the personal data the organisation collects. Where does the data enter the extended enterprise? What are the business processes that will use those data? Where is the data stored? And what third parties will touch those data?
Monitoring and Assessment of Third Parties
While oversight of third parties is not exactly new, the DPA takes the need for the capacity to a new level. For instance, it draws the distinction between other third parties and the so-called service providers.
Service providers receive personal data from organisations as part of a written contract to carry out a specific task like host a website, run payroll, write a legal brief, and so forth.
That said, compliance functions need to sharpen third party assessment. This is important so they can understand the business relationship and guarantee it meets all the criteria for service providers.
Building Compliance Business Processes
It is important to keep in mind that the DPA provides residents certain rights to their personal data. Case in point: under the DPA, they have the right to see the data organisations have collected about them.
Consequently, organisations need to create procedures and policies to fulfill that right. That said, consumers can submit a request and there should be a way to identify all relevant data and a way to present it back to the consumers.
Nowadays, security specialists have been able to determine bogus data access requests. This is where hackers pretend to be someone else asking for their data and dupe a company into sharing it with them.
Organisations need to be aware of similar threats and build identity confirmation control into the access request procedures. In addition, consumers also have the right to ask companies to delete their personal data.
Above are just three of the capabilities a company needs to develop to achieve DPA compliance. In a nutshell, achieving DPA compliance is all about handling personal data with care each and every time.
