How to Manage Information Risk and Protect Data Privacy in the Enterprise

How can enterprises reconcile evolving privacy laws with risk management processes and regulatory obligations? To prepare for increasing data volume and variety while also focusing on data privacy, we recommend:

Understand your data: the sources, features, users
How does your company engage with customers? What are the tools being used by frontline staff? What personal data can staff collect using those communications tools? Consider analyzing network traffic and scanning corporate devices to uncover what is actually in use as employees are often not forthcoming about the fact that they may be using “unapproved” communications platforms for business conversations. Interactions and engagement now take place across a complex web of channels and devices. You should be aware of all the locations where personal information might ultimately reside and the various dimensions included within that data.

Update policies to reflect all sources used for business purposes
In addition to consent policies, ensuring that internal communications policies are current and reflect how personal data should be managed is central to any privacy mandate.

Train employees on GDPR, CCPA and other applicable requirements
Training programs should be built out specific to privacy regulations. Related to CCPA, providing users and data managers with an overview of requirements can remove ambiguity when it comes to the consequences of potential policy violations.

Tune oversight processes to reflect higher risk areas
Business conversations are happening in a multitude of places. Like traditional email or chat, collaboration and conferencing platforms and encrypted messaging applications should be centrally managed so IT can monitor and protect personal information across all channels.

Leverage AI/surveillance to uncover dark data locations
Without AI-enabled surveillance and compliance tools, companies may find it difficult to address the risks that lie within new and various communications channels. Advanced analytics, language models and surveillance technology can help extend oversight processes with precision — so that only the most relevant information is surfaced.

Employ a scalable, content-agnostic solution for communications preservation and monitoring
Without access to your communications data, it will be increasingly harder to manage and protect it. An end-to-end solution for capturing, archiving, supervising and analyzing today’s mixture and volume of communications that makes that data available to myriad applications via APIs is a critical tool for a modern, global enterprise. An organization with those capabilities can use data to safeguard the privacy of its customers and employees, prevent costly fines, and protect the company’s reputation.