What Your Compliance Officer Should Know About Privacy

As the prevalence of digital technologies grows, compliance becomes a more vital part of how organizations do business. Compliance has become a relevant concern regardless of your organization’s industry, as new sweeping regulations such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) are shifting how organizations across all sectors view their risk.

A compliance officer is the central figure in ensuring that business processes and operations follow both internal policies and procedures, and external legislation. Typically serving in an advisory role and interacting with high-level stakeholders such as the company CEO and the board of directors, the compliance officer provides guidance on how to minimize risk related to data privacy and other laws.

What Does a Data Privacy Officer Do?

The International Compliance Association (ICA) describes the general responsibility of the compliance officer as providing an “in-house compliance service that effectively supports business areas in their duty to comply with relevant laws and regulations and internal procedures.” According to the ICA, the role of the compliance department is to:

• Identify risks
• Design and implement controls to protect from those risks
• Monitor and report the effectiveness of those controls
• Resolve compliance difficulties
• Advise business leaders about rules

Some regulations also require that specific individuals be designated to oversee the regulatory compliance. For example, the GDPR requires a designated data protection officer (DPO) while the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires a designated HIPAA compliance officer. While these duties can be assigned to others within the organization, the role would naturally fall to the chief compliance officer.

In addition to a minimum of a bachelor’s degree and five or more years of experience working in the compliance field, a compliance officer should possess skills such as high integrity, excellent communication and leadership. This needs to be a person (Read more...)