A secure IT infrastructure means architecting for resilience, data protection and compliance, accepting that disruptive change is the norm and part of risk management.
It supports a company that exploits the innovations that digital technology brings, combining business functions to orchestrate the appropriate and expected outcomes.
In practice, CEOs and IT leaders who use data protection and compliance to address ongoing business disruption will make their companies stronger, more sustainable and make significant contributions to the growth of organizations.
According to Gartner’s Board of Directors survey, 69% of corporate directors want to accelerate risk management and strategies to help deal with ongoing disruption.
For these organizations, it means their digital strategies have become real for the first time, and for others, it means ramping up digital investments quickly.
Digital strategies are a natural acceleration that organizations experience every day
This allows them to finally seek the security and agility that current times demand.
In fact, today’s world demands at least 4 characteristics from businesses: flexibility, fluidity, continuity and even improvisation – it’s how they will move forward.
That’s why digital business is more important than ever.
To ensure their organizations were resilient, many CIOs also applied some critical changes to their infrastructure makeup, gaining more speed, greater agility, better leadership through orchestration, and resilience to attacks through autonomy.
Business resilience through data protection and compliance
The term ‘resilience’ means the ability to prepare for and adapt to changes in abnormal conditions, recovering quickly from disruptions.
This includes the ability to withstand and recover from deliberate attacks, accidents, threats or naturally occurring incidents.
This ability to excel, however, is not something that happens on its own in data security and protection or in any other aspect. It must be planned and managed, so risk management for business continuity should be on the agenda of most companies.
Simply put, operating environment recovery is the comprehensive and standardized management of all processes to identify and mitigate risks that threaten an organization.
These risks include disruptions to ICT (Information and Communication Technology) continuity, cyber attacks, consumer demands, market changes, regulatory compliance requirements and even pandemics, as Covid-19 has shown.
Therefore, resilience for data protection may require complex management tasks, depending on the size and nature of the enterprise.
To achieve data protection and compliance, start with risk management
Safety, continuity and risk management are closely related. They work together to protect businesses from disruption.
But risk control should always be the starting point for identifying potential risks and then putting controls in place to manage them.
However, risk management does not necessarily eliminate threats all at once. It needs to be complemented by continuity management to ensure that organizations plan for contingencies, such as planning for alternative suppliers of goods and services.
But achieving integrity based on data protection requires careful planning of company operations to ensure that they are flexible enough to adapt to market changes, and that continuity of technology use is guaranteed.
This includes planning and management focusing on the data protection strategy as well as a comprehensive risk assessment in the form of a business impact analysis.
Ensure organizational flexibility with the use of technology and innovation
A rigid organization that cannot adapt flexibly will face challenges in any crisis.
Traditional organizational structures, non-transparent communication, underfunded IT, lack of digitalization and rigid management processes are all real obstacles in a crisis.
Instead, make sure employees and managers are able to act in any situation, communication is clear, there is a culture of honest feedback, IT focused on data protection, employees trained and processes digitized.
In this way, employees can act independently and micro-management is avoided.
It is also important to make all the necessary organizational changes without delay to get rid of silos, integrate IT and business, and plan comprehensively to build a culture of overachievement.
If IT, supply chain management, information security and other stakeholders work in isolation, there is a risk of failure.
Instead, plan to work in teams across divisions to prepare for a crisis.
Prepare for a data protection and compliance crisis comprehensively
Adapting the business model and processes, investments and IT operations to be more resilient in data protection
Next, validate that the technology sector fully understands what keeps the production environment running, so there is deeper alignment of activities and IT, and investments are focused on continuity, collaboration and self-service.
Also plan how operations will work during a crisis. Develop an emergency plan and set up an incident command structure to ensure everyone knows their roles and responsibilities in various crisis scenarios.
Education and training are essential, and regular testing of business continuity plans for crises should not be forgotten.
How e-signature can boost data protection and compliance
E-signatures have proven incredibly useful for data protection and compliance, as well as business continuity, even before the Covid-19 crisis hit. It is now helping to drive operations assurance around governance, risk management and compliance across all legal relationships.
Given the global challenges we now face, consider how you would obtain the signatures of key company managers in the following cases:
- Share purchase and transfer agreements;
- Documents and powers of attorney;
- Minutes and resolutions;
- Procurement contracts;
- Integration and employment contracts;
- Letters of appointment of directors.
Electronic signatures work like fingerprints. Its use brings benefits for entity management, operations conservation, data protection and compliance, including:
- Improved efficiency;
- Cost reduction;
- Risk mitigation;
- Elimination of manual errors;
- Better security;
- Creation of an audit trail.
Most importantly, these efficiencies allow more time for strategic management of the company.
Legal professionals spend less time looking for signatures and more time thinking about the bigger picture of entity management, bringing an end to reactive compliance and an era of proactive governance.
How Eval can help your business with data protection and compliance
Eval has solutions for application encryption, data tokenization, anonymization, cloud protection, database encryption, big data encryption, protection of structured and unstructured files in file server and cloud and key management to meet different demands in the area of data security.
These are solutions for business to be compliant and protected against data leakage.
About Eval
Eval has been developing projects in the financial, health, education, and industry segments for over 18 years. Since 2004, we have offered solutions for Authentication, Electronic and Digital Signature, and Data Protection. Currently, we are present in the main Brazilian banks, health institutions, schools and universities, and different industries.
With market recognized value, Eval’s solutions and services meet the highest regulatory standards for public and private organizations, such as SBIS, ITI, PCI DSS, and LGPD. In practice, we promote information security and compliance, increase companies’ operational efficiency, and reduce costs.
Innovate now, lead always: get to know Eval’s solutions and services and take your company to the next level.
Eval, safety is value.
