GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2 and more

Regulatory compliance is a cornerstone of responsible business. The difficulty is, in comparison with actual cornerstones – that are stable and solid – regulatory compliance is more like molding putty.

There may be a myriad of workplace compliance regulations, including some you would possibly not realize apply to your corporation. Lots of the regulations overlap. Others contradict.

On this complex landscape, a regulatory compliance policy is crucial for any business handling sensitive information. Which is nearly every business on this data-driven world. Yours included.

Together with protecting your corporation from financial and legal risks, a compliance policy provides guidelines for a way your employees should operate and make decisions.

This guide will explore data regulations intimately, outline the important thing requirements for regulatory compliance, and supply a guide for creating an efficient regulatory compliance policy.

What’s regulatory compliance?

Regulatory compliance involves following the laws, regulations and specifications relevant to your industry and business activities.

It’s a subset of compliance management dealing specifically with regulations.

These regulations can come from federal and state governments and international bodies, including bodies outside of your principal market. They impact the whole lot from worker pay rates to maternity leave allowance, hiring policies, data handling processes, consumer protection, promoting and marketing, and workplace safety.

What varieties of regulations might apply to your corporation?

In practice, there are dozens of regulations affecting most businesses, if not lots of. We’re referring to labor laws, anti-discrimination laws, workplace health and safety, and data privacy regulations.

Nevertheless, we’re particularly excited about data privacy regulations and their role in workforce compliance. Those include GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2 and ISO 27001.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a landmark European Union regulation that governs the processing of non-public data. It applies to any organization that collects, stores, or processes data of EU residents, no matter their location.

Key requirements of GDPR compliance include:

Consent: Individuals must provide explicit consent before you may process their personal data.
DPO: Appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO) to oversee compliance.
Breach notification: Notify authorities and affected individuals inside 72 hours of an information breach.
Data subject rights: Individuals have specific and wide-ranging rights, comparable to accessing, rectifying and erasing their data, restricting processing, and objecting to processing.

HIPAA: Protecting health information

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a U.S. federal law that protects the privacy and security of individually identifiable patient health information (PHI). It applies to healthcare providers, health plans, insurers and their business associates.

Key requirements of HIPAA compliance include:

Security Rule: Establish safeguards to guard PHI from unauthorized access, disclosure, use, or modification.
Privacy Rule: Protect the privacy of PHI by providing individuals with certain rights, comparable to the proper to access, amend, and request a replica of their medical records.
Breach Notification Rule: Notify individuals and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) of an information breach that compromises PHI.

SOC 2: Ensuring security, availability, and confidentiality

Service Organization Control 2 (SOC 2) is a framework developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA).

SOC 2 provides a commonsense framework for managing security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality and privacy risks.

While not a legal requirement, SOC 2 compliance is commonly a prerequisite for doing business, especially within the technology and financial services industries.

Key requirements of SOC 2 compliance include:

Data controls: Documented and evaluated across five “trust services criteria”; security, availability, integrity, confidentiality and privacy.
Audits: Independent and accredited CPAs audit the effectiveness of those controls over time and supply an in depth report.
Continuous improvement: SOC 2 compliance requires you to adapt the controls over time as security threats and data protection evolve.

ISO 27001: A Global Standard for Information Security

ISO 27001 is a global standard that gives a framework for information security management systems (ISMS). It outlines a set of controls and best practices that organizations can implement to guard their information assets.

If SOC 2 is the US-centric framework for data privacy controls, then ISO 27001 is the international playbook for best practices. It’s broader and more strategic.

Like SOC 2 compliance, ISO 27001 isn’t a legal requirement. Nevertheless, certification demonstrates a high level of commitment to information security. That’s a competitive advantage.

Key requirements of ISO 27001 include:

Information security policy: Establish a transparent information security policy that defines the organization’s commitment to protecting its information assets.
Risk assessment: Conduct an intensive risk assessment to discover potential threats and vulnerabilities.
Controls implementation: Implement appropriate security controls to mitigate identified risks.
Monitoring and review: Repeatedly monitor and review the data security management system to make sure its effectiveness.

The impact of all these regulations on your corporation

The regulations it’s essential to follow rely on your industry, location, operating model, back-end systems, customer-facing activities and workforce profile.

Note the and there. Regulatory compliance is rarely a case of “or.” It’s at all times “and.”

So as to add to the confusion, it’s not at all times clear which regulations apply. For instance, a couple of international company has by accident violated European data handling regulations by storing individual data on non-EU servers.

That is how firms find themselves in hot water with regulators. They design a process or operation to fulfill one standard, not realizing it violates one other. Or they meet local laws but overlook the very fact they’re doing business in a borderless online market.

Regulatory compliance is critical to avoid legal penalties, protect your brand, and ensure your stakeholders’ safety and well-being.

Looking inward, workforce compliance is just as essential. It safeguards your operational integrity, protects employees’ rights, and reduces risk for employers and employees.

But compliance isn’t easy, as you may see from the long list above.

That is where a regulatory compliance policy becomes essential.

The role of a regulatory compliance policy in workforce compliance

A regulatory compliance policy establishes your organization’s commitment to compliance and provides the structure, systems and processes to make sure consistency.

A regulatory compliance policy provides a framework for understanding, implementing, and maintaining adherence to relevant laws, regulations and industry standards.

It’s the muse of your overall compliance management system (CMS). It’s also an integral a part of maintaining a healthy and productive workforce.

A well-crafted policy ensures that your organization:

Identifies and addresses relevant risks
Establishes roles, responsibilities and accountability
Provides guidance for workers’ actions and decision-making
Facilitates audits and assessments
Supports a culture of compliance
Keeps up with regulatory changes
Repeatedly improves regulatory compliance

A regulatory compliance policy is an ongoing commitment. It’s an investment. One which ensures compliance is ingrained in your organization’s operations.

Making a regulatory compliance policy

Define the scope

First, determine which laws, regulations and industry standards apply to your corporation. Consider aspects like location (including where your employees work and where customers come from), industry, size, and the activities you engage in.

It’s price getting advice from a regulatory compliance specialist to make sure you don’t miss a step.

Assess the risks

Discover and assess potential risks to data privacy and security.

Start along with your policies, processes and data handling controls. Next, have a look at how data is stored, transferred and used across your organization.

Ensure you think about third-party data handling. This tends to be a requirement for regulatory compliance. Assess how your corporation tools and applications contribute to – or threaten – regulatory compliance goals.

Assign responsibilities

Determine who will oversee compliance efforts, conduct risk assessments, implement procedures and monitor adherence.

Consider forming a committee or hiring compliance officers. Designating compliance champions ensures that responsibility is clearly defined across the organization.

Develop compliance procedures

Outline the procedures for ensuring compliance with each regulation. This includes how your organization monitors compliance, handles violations and reports to regulatory bodies.

Creating separate policies for every area of business is a very good idea. Nevertheless, it’s possible you’ll not have to craft individual policies for every regulation. For instance, a call center servicing Europe and North America might create an overarching policy that meets each GDPR and SOC 2 compliance requirements.

Implement training programs

Develop compliance training programs to teach employees on their responsibilities and best practices.

Be sure that that these programs are relevant to specific teams or departments. Tailoring the training increases the likelihood of success and promotes a culture of compliance.

Follow our in-depth guide to compliance training to make sure your team has the abilities and knowledge to fulfill their responsibilities.

Arrange monitoring and reporting systems

Implement systems to trace regulatory compliance risks and discover potential issues.

To do that, refer back to the goals you established earlier. Monitoring KPIs related to compliance – even in case you can’t monitor compliance directly – helps to proactively address risks.

Conduct internal audits or engage independent auditors to evaluate compliance efforts and discover areas for improvement. Document the outcomes (in addition to policies, procedures and training records) to make sure you’ve a track record of compliance.

Review and update commonly

Regulatory compliance will not be a one-time effort. Recurrently review and update your compliance policy to reflect changes in regulations, business operations and industry standards.

Establish mechanisms for workers to offer feedback on the policy and report compliance issues. Use this feedback to enhance. Hopefully, this helps compliance turn out to be a part of your organization’s cultural fabric over time.

Technology’s role in maintaining compliance

Technology plays a pivotal role in maintaining regulatory compliance with GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2 and ISO 27001. With the proper tech, you may streamline processes, reduce risks, protect data and ensure adherence to complex regulations.

Data minimization: You may customize the extent of detail collected and erase data on request, ensuring compliance with GDPR data minimization and erasure principles. By default, you simply collect data that’s absolutely vital.
Detailed reporting: Time Doctor provides comprehensive worker activity reports to enable you to discover compliance risks and investigate incidents. In case your systems are compromised, Time Doctor’s detailed reports enable you to assess the size and respond quickly.
Built for borderless teams: Distant work adds even more complexity to regulatory compliance. Our platform is built on a best-practice model that makes it easier for you to fulfill the relevant requirements of doing business wherever you’re.
Secure data handling: Stringent data security protocols ensure worker information is protected to a normal that meets regulatory requirements. We employ encryption and other security measures to guard personal data, including worker work hours and productivity data, in transit and at rest.
Access control: Time Doctor provides granular access control. Only the people you authorize can access sensitive worker data. This aligns with regulatory compliance requirements for managing access to information while reducing the chance of information breaches.
Audit trails: Time Doctor’s logging capabilities enable you to create detailed audit trails that might be essential during regulatory compliance audits. These logs, enabled by worker monitoring, track who accessed which data, when, and what actions were taken.
Supporting SOC 2 audits: Our platform helps you achieve SOC 2 compliance by ensuring data is processed and stored securely, available if you need it, shielded from the mistaken people, and handled with high integrity.
Risk management: Time Doctor offers detailed insights into how data is collected, stored and accessed. Integrations with 60+ leading business apps provide you with visibility across every project and process so you may higher discover potential risks and implement appropriate controls.
Monitoring compliance training: You may easily track the time employees spend in compliance training, in addition to another task. That is critical for proving your organization’s commitment to compliance during inspections or audits.
Documentation and reporting: Time Doctor generates detailed reports on website and app usage, suspicious unusual activity, worker performance and project management KPIs. These can all be used for regulatory compliance audits and continuous improvement initiatives.

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What’s regulatory compliance?