Overview:
SMBs understand the importance of regulation/standard compliance but don’t have the resources to manage it.
SMB Compliance Challenges:
During their company lifecycle, most SMBs need to consider the security of their data subject and their systems. There’s not always enough time to consider compliance requirements and managing technologies that need to be involved for compliance- for those SMBs, these requirements take a lot of time to assimilate and cost a lot of money and those resources need to be a point to promote their business.
Compliance with standards or regulations can impact many surfaces of a small business, such as marketing, IT, and other processes.
Below are some of the challenges that SMBs are facing with compliance laws and/or standards:
Security consultants: In order to be compliant, the SMBs need to assign a security consultant which costs a lot of money to guide them and give them the relevant guidelines and controls to be compliant. In most cases, there needs to be a 3rd party involved to help with manpower and extra assistance.
Resources: SMBs need to assign resources to help with systems and extra manpower that can focus solely on their business, allowing them to manage their business goals.
Data subject rights: In most of the regulations, data subjects have the right to request the information that the businesses collect about them. Some businesses have built an infrastructure that can provide an answer to these requests but this is very challenging and SMBs need enough resources to do so.
How SMBs Can Remain Compliant with New Regulations
So, what can SMBs do to prepare for those regulations?
To start, they need to read more about those regulations, see what other companies are facing, and find systems that can help them in the easiest and most cost-effective way to be compliant such as Kamanja.
Data mapping: SMBs can get ahead with the way they collect the data from their customers, how they store it and where they store it, the SMB can document and maintain this record and approve it themselves.
DPO: Even this kind of position is looking only for the enterprise companies, it is more than important to assign a DPO even as a second skill to the existing employees and give them the resources to achieve those skills.
Budget: SMBs will need to modify IT infrastructure, websites, and some processes that will answer the regulations or standard requirements.
Outsource services: By using outsourcing services with a managed service provider (MSP) who manages IT, SMBs can lean on their MSP to perform IT data checkups and help ensure the security of data subject data. MSPs can look for things SMBs can do differently and help them develop a BCP or DRP and help them understand their potentials vulnerabilities.
Compliance is as important for SMB as it is for large or enterprise companies. A lack of knowledge of current requirements is not an adequate excuse for failing to comply. Every SMB needs to look at how they collect, process, share and store their data subject’s data, in order to make sure they have the processes and policies in place to protect the integrity of data. SMB’s need to set measures in place to facilitate data access requests as well as procedures to identify and report a data breach should and when it occurs. By choosing the right consultant, partners and system, they can do it easily and maintain it over time.
Kamanja’s mission is to help SMBs to comply easily with using end-to-end security solutions without need other platforms for compliance
