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With the increased data breaches among big and small companies, data privacy has become an important business concern. Internet compliance may not be getting as much hype as data breach prevention technologies. However, compliance is intertwined with cybersecurity and is equally important.
Mostly, people blame technology when data breaches occur, but human error plays a significant role. While most businesses have established excellent policies and rules for safe technology use, they can only be effective against preventing breaches if adhered to. While rules and regulations may exist, compliance will ensure you are safe from malicious cyber attacks.
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What Is Internet Compliance?
Internet compliance pertains to the various rules, regulations, and requirements designed by regulatory agencies to protect a certain subset of internet users.
Internal compliance is about the propensity of your employees to adhere to data security policies you have established. This may include things like avoiding unsafe websites, updating software regularly, and knowing what types of data are too sensitive to be shared over email. Basically, it pertains to any activity that can prevent a data breach incident.
On the other hand, external compliance revolves around adherence to outside regulations often set by governing bodies. While an external compliance violation can lead to data breaches, in most cases, fines, penalties, and damaged corporate image are more prevalent with these types of violations.
Benefits of Compliance to Your Business
Compliance can benefit your company in multiple ways, including protecting your digital assets and customer data. Also, it can help you attract more customers by building trust and brand reputation. In an age where customers are getting sophisticated, every business must strive to win and maintain the trust of its customers.
- Avoid Fines and Penalties
Companies ought to be conversant with various internet compliance regulations that are enforced in their industry. Globally, there has been an increase in legislation meant to protect personal data gathered by businesses.
Typically, compliance violations often attract hefty fines and penalties. For instance, the HIPAA framework can impose fines of up to $50,000 per violation. Similarly, the GDPR compliance can attract fines of 20 million Euros or 4% of global turnover.
However, businesses with robust internet compliance management protocols can avoid penalties by ensuring the security of customer data.
2. Build Customer Trust And Safeguard Your Business Reputation
While data breaches have become quite common, they damage a company’s reputation and erode customer trust. Therefore, it is vital to implement solid security safeguards to minimize the occurrence of devastating privacy breaches.
According to Forbes insights, at least 46% of businesses suffered significant brand and reputation damage following a cyber breach. In addition, recent studies indicate that 65% of customers whose data was directly or indirectly breached lost trust in the company involved. With fewer security incidents, your business can maintain customer trust and build brand value.
3. Enhance Company Culture
The adoption of top-notch security and privacy measures can go a long way in enhancing corporate culture that demonstrates leadership in security. Organizations can weave a company culture around the importance of customer privacy and data security. Most importantly, your company can demonstrate a commitment to cybersecurity by investing in privacy and security processes.
A strong corporate culture can ensure a long-lasting sense of responsibility towards protecting customer data. And since most data breaches are a result of mistakes by internal end-users, strengthening a secure corporate culture leads to internal compliance. Therefore, each employee will be on guard against suspicious activities.
4. Enhance Data Management Capability
In most businesses, maintaining internet compliance involves taking inventory of the types of data they gather and keep. To do this, companies develop enhanced capabilities to access and modify the data on a need basis. For instance, the GDPR standards require companies to grant prompt access to customer data and be able to delete the information upon request.
The requirements are pushing businesses to redesign their operating procedures to facilitate security and privacy. In the process, the redesigned data management processes often lead to improved and streamlined operational efficiency.
Final Words
Security and privacy compliance doesn’t happen overnight. With the appropriate strategy supported by an action plan, you can make progress towards compliance and safeguard customer data. More than ever, people are very concerned about the privacy of the data they share with businesses.
And as history has demonstrated, security breaches can have devastating consequences even to the largest corporations. Therefore, it is vital to comply with security and privacy regulations. When a customer hands over their private data to your company, they expect you to protect it from malicious entities.
In the event that trust is eroded, most customers will not be at ease to do business with you, and that could hurt your bottom line. However, implementing appropriate security measures can ensure a better brand reputation and customer loyalty.
