How to Properly Manage Your Business Compliance Requirements and Lower Risks

When running any business, there are multiple compliance requirements to keep on top of.

These are legal regulatory requirements that are designed to ensure the security and safety of various types of data and information. Managing them all can be a time-consuming task and seem a little overwhelming.

No matter what your compliance requirements are, you must understand them all and ensure they are all managed properly.

In this article, you will learn more about different types of compliance requirements, how to manage them, and how to look after the overall risks involved with managing valuable data. If you run a business, this information could be very useful.

What Is Payment Card Industry Compliance?

One of the main types of compliance that business owners have to understand is payment card industry compliance (PCI compliance). In essence, it is quite simple.

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The PCI compliance standards are in place to ensure that all companies who process, manage, store, or otherwise interact with payment card information maintain a secure environment to do so.

This means that all transactions that include a customer’s credit or debit card details are properly protected and managed, while also preventing security breaches of company data where card information is stored.

The PCI data security standard (PCI DSS) was established by the major card brands Visa, AMEX, MasterCard, Discover, and JCB in 2006 to ensure their customer’s data was properly protected at all times.

It, therefore, affects any business that deals with card transactions.

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Any failure to properly maintain PCI DSS could result in an investigation by the group, leading to fines, audits, or merchants being banned from accepting card transactions involving these leading brands.

Other Types of Business Compliance Requirements

In many other industries, there are various compliance regulations required. In healthcare, for example, there is OIG compliance, preventing the illegal sale or purchase of medical goods, or illegal billing to medical insurance companies.

In general, there are labor laws, workplace standards laws, and various health and safety standards to adhere to.

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Hire Managed Risk Services

One of the main ways to protect your business and assist with the management of compliance standards is to hire a web risk monitoring company.

These companies do everything they can to make sure your business is compliant with all regulations, as well as scanning all your 3rd party business partners’ affairs, websites, sales, and more, to ensure your full supply chain is compliant. 

These companies often do this work by offering you a risk management platform. On this platform, you can set certain tasks to be checked regularly, such as scanning merchants’ sites to ensure all stock and sales are legal. Most of these searches are performed using automation, meaning you need no staff on the case, saving you time and money.

The other services these companies can offer include encrypting transaction data properly, scanning for viruses, monitoring emails, and monitoring software security.

All of these things combined protect your business and help maintain proper, regulated security standards and compliance. Without a doubt, it is a smart choice to hire professionals to help you manage your compliance and security needs.

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Use Encryption at All Times

One of the ways many companies get tripped up is via data breaches. Not properly protecting data with encryption and backups means that all your customer, client, and personal data is at risk of being leaked, stolen, shared, or sold.

Encrypted services are easier than ever to set up. Instead of building your encrypted systems and services in-house, you can easily outsource to a cloud computing company.

The benefits of doing this far outweigh the small cost involved. 

Staff Training Is Important

Compliance with these regulations and laws is not optional for businesses and therefore it should not be optional for staff.

Your staff needs to be made aware of all policies and procedures in place, why they are used, and what happens if they are not adhered to. 

Educating your staff is super important, as without this knowledge they could make mistakes leading to compliance failures.

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Staff who deal with sensitive data should receive extra training, making sure they are extremely knowledgeable on the subject matter and actively working on protecting data and monitoring their work for mistakes or issues.

Compliance is extremely important in all sectors of business, especially when customer data or financial data is on the line. Sadly, hackers love to steal this sort of data and use it against people and businesses themselves, which is why these compliance groups and laws exist.

Make sure you are doing everything you can to manage and maintain compliance regulations.