How To Meet Data Compliance Standards?

2. In the digital age, data is the most valuable possession of any business. Today companies hold more data than ever before. • With this comes a crucial responsibility of how this data is stored, utilized, shared, and protected. • The recent data breach incidents in Facebook and Cambridge Analytica illustrate how failure to take care of confidential information can cause severe reputational and financial damage. • In the last few years, the number and complexity of regulations that firms need to comply with have increased remarkably as authorities aim to take back control of the enormous amounts of data now stored in the cloud and on the servers worldwide. • These regulations that businesses need to follow while handling sensitive and personal data are known asdata compliance. • In this write-up, we've discussed five necessary data compliance standards and how to meet them.

3. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) • European Union's GDPR encompasses a range of rules on people's rights to know what data businesses possess about them, how these data should be processed by the companies, and tighter rules on data breach reporting. • It does not apply to just Europe-based firms. If you're involved in a business relationship or partnership with any individual firm under European jurisdiction, you need to abide by the GDPR data compliance provisions. Although this European regulatory standard involves various rules, it operates under three primary principles- • Obtaining consent for sharing data • Ensuring the rights of data subjects • Minimizing the amount of information you hold

4. The first step to ensure following GDPR data compliance protocols is assigning an individual (data protection officer) to monitor its activity. • Assigning a data protection officer is mandatory in certain organizations that hold a large amount of data. • The data protection official is responsible for monitoring and implementing data compliance strategies to ensure the GDPR protocol's fulfillment. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability (HIPAA) • The HIPAA act protects the safety and confidentiality of the healthcare and medical records of individuals. Any organization handling such sensitive information needs to abide by the HIPAA guidelines. • Failing to protect such data can attract huge penalties. Electronic health records need to be restricted only to those valid reasons to access them under HIPAA provisions. Therefore string access control and data encryption are a must. .

5. HIPAA standards don't only apply to the records within the databases, but while sharing as well. All the file transfers should be protected, controlled, and fully monitored. • HIPAA requires a complete audit trail for each data interaction. For ensuring compliance with HIPAA regulations, event log management software is a significant tool. • This ensures full records getting automatically updated. PCI DSS- Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard • PCI DSS defines regulations on how companies protect and handle cardholder data, such as credit card data. • Although this is an industry-mandated data compliance standard, non-compliance can result in heavy fines and termination of the partnership with payment processors and banks. • PCI DSS sets out a series of dataops steps describing what companies should do to meet these standards. Regularly testing systems and processes, having an adequate firewall in place, etc., are some specific regulations for meeting PCI DSS standards.

6. Also Read:Why Integrate Data Compliance In Software Applications? Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) • The aim of this act was protection against accounting scams. Under SOX Act, IT firms need to ensure all transactional and accounting records are appropriately retained. • For remaining compliant real-time reporting of the firm's financials, document management systems, and backups of key information is necessary. • Spreadsheets recorded phone calls, financial transactions, and emails require to be preserved for at least 5 years if any financial auditors need to access them. Tools for monitoring data flow, automating workflows, storing and retrieving information, etc., play critical roles in this.