Compliance is, as we have talked about before, a very complicated domain which involves complex processes that must be followed to the letter to ensure compliance. The good news is that compliance has been getting more codified as time passes by. Advancements in technology, better analytical tools, increased expectations from customers, and an ever-increasing pace of business have all contributed to make compliance management faster and better.

Compliance managers did not have any tools for their work until a few decades ago – they had to ensure compliance using only general-purpose tools and solutions. Now there are multiple dedicated compliance management solutions available of different types and sizes. This ensures that almost every type and size of business can find a solution that perfectly fulfills its compliance needs.

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Compliance solutions are designed to help compliance managers quickly discover issues and resolve them. These solutions are designed with the help of compliance experts working in conjunction with software developers. This is why the workflows in these compliance solutions are so helpful for compliance managers; the workflows were designed with input from compliance managers and experts with real-world experience.

That is why data related features play a central role in almost every modern compliance management platform. Data security isn’t just a tenet of good cybersecurity practices; it is also an important compliance requirement for businesses in the digital era.

Data Protection

Most of the people who are currently working at managerial positions in offices, they began their jobs in what can be considered the ‘’Wild Wild West’’ era of information technology. Email and digital storage solutions were still new concepts and people would send any type of information online or store it without thinking about it twice. Many high-profile cyberattacks have made people and businesses realize how wrong this approach was, which is why there has been such a focus on information security in most businesses over the past two decades.

Compliance managers must abide by the many data privacy and protection related laws and rules that are in place across businesses all over the country. These rules are easy to be on the wrong side of when things are being handled manually, since the manager must keep note of what can be shared and how it can be shared at every turn, but compliance solutions make it easy to implement data security. Since all the data is stored within the compliance management system, the relevant data privacy laws can be enforced by the computer which tracks where files are being stored and who is accessing them.

Data security isn’t just a tenet of good cybersecurity practices; it is also an important compliance requirement for businesses in the digital era. Click To Tweet

As you can imagine, this also does wonders when it comes to liability related issues. Taking data protection and privacy away from manual processes and automating enforcement ensures that banks and businesses can worry a bit less about someone accidentally sending a file to the wrong person or sharing confidential information publicly.

Data Reliability

Data reliability can be a major problem for businesses because of the difficulty in detecting the problem. A lot of people think of someone acting malicious when it comes to data reliability – maybe someone intentionally committing fraud by changing financial documents. In reality, the biggest problem with data reliability is how easy it’s in use for someone with good intentions to accidentally create a problem. If someone enters the wrong data during manual entry and the error is not detected, all reports that are generated using that data will be inaccurate and unreliable as well.

Another very common issue is version control of documents and spreadsheets. Two different people who have received the same spreadsheet in their email inboxes may make their own changes to the data in the spreadsheets they download. They may then share these sheets with more people in the office. This means that there exist two different spreadsheets, both with different data in them, but the users of the spreadsheets are unaware and think they are the same.

Compliance management platforms generally centralize the storage of data. This means that instead of the files being shared over email inboxes, there is only one version of the file stored on the cloud server which everyone can access. Any changes that are made by any authorized person show up in the files, making it what is known as a single source of truth.

Compliance Management Software

Compliance management solutions ensure that businesses are ready to deliver the fast-paced services that customers require by unleashing the potential of technology while still adhering to compliance requirements. Compliance technology acts as a continuous monitoring and governing tools that keeps confidential information safe and ensures that all the data being used in reporting is reliable.

Interested in seeing how a compliance management platform can make it easier for your organization to use data for strategic information while ensuring data security? Get in touch with our compliance experts for a demonstration of our American Bankers Association (ABA) endorsed compliance management solution Predict360.