How to comply with the international data privacy laws?

It is hard for corporations to adhere to their legal requirements regarding privacy fully. The dynamic nature of the digital business ecosystems results in new compliance risks and gaps. While some firms take this seriously, others simply complete compliance once and think they are done. Meeting regulations and preventing breaches need continuous attention.

Even the most careful businesses sometimes fail to address privacy concerns. Here are five privacy errors that no company should make.

Continuous privacy management

The typical mistake businesses make failing to execute continuous privacy management tasks. They make a risk assessment, have policies and procedures, provide new employee training, use privacy clauses within third-party contracts, and think they have fulfilled their privacy compliance duties.

These inadequate privacy measures lead to vulnerabilities as the corporate environment changes, causing security issues, privacy violations, bad press, diminished confidence, disgruntled clients, and frequent lawsuits. These weaknesses will be found by auditors and authorities, which could lead to hefty non-compliance fines and penalties.

The ISACA Privacy in Practice 2022 survey confirms this tendency, which found that only 50% of respondents regularly manage risks and keep an eye on compliance and enforcement. Only 33% of responses discuss the dangers of emerging technologies.

Cross-border compliance

Many lawyers believe that data protection and privacy laws only apply where the firm is based. This is a typical fallacy. According to the ISACA Privacy in Practice survey results, 50% of respondents lack the knowledge necessary to grasp the rules and legislation they must follow.

Making decisions based solely on where a company conducts business is a mistake. There may be privacy laws or compliance concerns the company must adhere to in addition to those of the country where it is based. For instance, a U.S.-based company may have clients in Europe, so some European data privacy laws would likely apply in addition to any U.S. laws.

The laws governing breach response have a serious issue with this. Many North American companies adhere solely to the rules of their respective state or area. This notion could cost a lot because the United States has at least 54 state and territorial breach laws.

In addition to applying all applicable laws and regulations affecting the related people, privacy management programs should also summarize all requirements so that a single set of processes may be used to address the common requirements and the particular requirements for each law.

Many businesses also have overconfidence in their ability to avoid privacy breaches, which prevents them from reacting fully, quickly, and effectively when one does occur.

No room for shortcuts

There are occasions when several requirements of other laws can be satisfied by adhering to one fundamental legislation. There are variations, though, such as criteria for particular legislation that must be followed.

For instance, a U.S. company that expands into the EU can be in for unpleasant surprises if they assume that the CCPR and GDPR have the same standards and don't take any further compliance measures on their new EU sites.

It is a mistake to believe that CCPR compliance satisfies every GDPR requirement. This false assumption could bring significant fines, penalties, and legal action.

While many laws and regulations have similar requirements, all businesses should know that there are frequently additional criteria to meet.

Privacy training

Most companies don't offer enough security and privacy education, and even when they do, it rarely leads to staff members functioning in a more safe or privacy-protecting way.

For instance, gamification-based training is entertaining and can be an addition to training, but it often does not address certain professional activities. Regular training sessions covering a range of issues particular to employees' jobs should be offered in addition to generic privacy training. Additionally, there must be touchpoints where employees are reminded to carry out tasks in a way that respects privacy and safeguards personal data between successive training sessions.

According to the ISACA Privacy in Practice 2022 survey, only 13% of companies offer quarterly training, and another 13% either don't know if training is offered or say it doesn't.

To prevent breaches and incidents, organizations should offer comprehensive, continuing training that explains how to carry out job activities that protect privacy and secure data. Without awareness, organizations might not even know that a breach has occurred until they are sued.