The business world runs on data, but if that data were to fall into the wrong hands, it could be detrimental to organizations and individuals alike. To help combat this, various governments and organizations have released data protection rules that span industries and individuals, all aimed at protecting the most vital currency: data.
From limiting use and sharing of personal data to protecting proprietary information within an industry or government circle, businesses are now tasked with monitoring a plethora of data that falls under the protection of multiple state, federal, and international rules. Download this solution overview to learn more about how PKWARE’s PK Protect technology solution suite empowers organizations to find, protect, share, and remediate personal data for full compliance with legal requirements including: CCPA, GDPA, PCI DSS, HIPAA, ITAR, SOX and TISAX.
Why Multi-Mandate Compliance Is Its Own Problem
Most organizations are not subject to one regime. They are subject to several, each defining protected data differently, each with its own deadlines, and each assessed separately.
Handled as separate projects, the same work is done repeatedly and the answers disagree. Handled as one inventory reported several ways, the cost falls and the answers agree, which matters when two regulators ask about the same incident.
The Regimes Most Often in Play
GDPR, enforced from 2018, changed how personal data is processed and applies to any company anywhere that collects, uses or processes the personal information of people in the European Union.
CCPA is among the strictest privacy laws in the world and reaches any American business holding data on California residents, restricting the use of sensitive personal information and giving consumers the right to opt out of sale or sharing.
PCI DSS, in place since 2006, sets technical and operational requirements for protecting cardholder account data, verified through annual assessment.
HIPAA governs protected health information held by covered entities and their business associates. SOX governs financial reporting controls. ITAR governs defense-related technical data. TISAX is the automotive sector’s information security assessment, and it arrives through supply chain relationships rather than through jurisdiction.
What They Share
Every one of them asks the same first question in a different vocabulary: what data do you hold, and where is it. None of the obligations that follow can be satisfied without that answer, and none of them can be satisfied twice from two partial answers.
That is why discovery is the shared foundation rather than a per-regulation activity. One accurate inventory serves seven programs; seven inventories serve none of them well.
One Workflow, Not Seven
Discovery, classification and protection running as a single streamlined workflow is what produces organization-wide control over sensitive data. Each finding is classified once, protected according to the strictest applicable rule, and recorded once.
Applying the highest common denominator is generally cheaper than maintaining separate treatments per regime, and it removes the failure mode where data governed by two rules is protected only to the weaker one.
Regulation Is Still Expanding
Governments and industry bodies continue to develop, implement and revise data protection rules, and the direction is consistently toward more obligation rather than less.
A compliance program tied to the specific requirements of the regimes that exist today has to be rebuilt each time one is added. A program built on knowing and protecting the data absorbs a new regulation as a reporting change instead.