“Be Prepared!”
Almost 110 years ago to the day, Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, coined a phrase that still resonates profoundly today. For whether you were a member of Baden-Powell's movement or not, the advice to "be prepared" should be your mantra if you are working in or with Californian customers, thanks to the, now active California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) data privacy regulations.
The cost of a privacy breach
Although CCPA went live on January 1st, there is still some time left to get ready for compliance before the regulation is given teeth (June 1st) and mitigate the risk of potentially heavy penalties that non-compliance could entail - $2500 per record for non-intentional violations and $7500 per record for intentional violations, not to mention the fallout from reputational damage. A breach that includes thousands of records could, therefore, easily result in multi-million-dollar penalties.
5 Top Tips for CCPA Compliance
So, how can you prepare and be ready to handle CCPA data privacy requirements?
- Assure Data Access & Retrieval– Californian consumers now have the right to access any interactions that you have with them, whether by phone, email, chat, SMS or otherwise. However, when so many, and often siloed, platforms are used to record and store such a vast amount of data and interactions (e.g. CRM, Marketing databases, recording, etc.), carrying out this task is likely to be extremely arduous and complex. Advanced technologies should therefore be in place that provide you with a firm grasp of how and where that data is managed and contained so that access can be granted efficiently and comprehensively.
- Track & Assure Customer Consent – knowing how you keep track of consented calls, as well as the recordings of those who opt-out of having their data collected, is crucial for staying compliant. As a result, make sure you have solid and easy-to-use tracking methods in place – such as tagging. In addition, having systems that can alert agents in real-time when something is amiss in an interaction recording will help reduce risks of regulatory violations and power better quality processes overall.
- Encrypt Your Data – it is imperative that all personally identifiable information (PII) data that is collected is encrypted according to the latest encryption standards and maintains its integrity. This is in order to reduce risk of exposure should your business experience a data breach.
- Review Privacy & Deletion Policies – data deletion procedures should be clear, well thought out and repeatedly rehearsed in order to handle such requests from customers. Furthermore, in case external auditors wish to review how these requests are handled, having the ability to create and clearly view these policies will be an efficient way to save huge amounts of time for both you and your Compliance departments.
- Review Your Compliance Tools – data privacy compliance requirements such as those imposed by CCPA, can place a heavy burden on IT, Business and Compliance teams - up to 25% of their time.. Investment in tools that manage and automate consent, data tagging, violation detection and corrective actions in one place will then put your organization in good stead to focus on tasks with higher business value.
Sounds like a big headache? It could be, but it needn't be so.
Being Prepared is Being Empowered
At NICE, we provide our customers with a unique solution that supports the most stringent requirements of privacy and data security regulations and leverages automation and analytics with mission-critical mechanisms. With Compliance Center, you can monitor your compliance processes and take corrective and proactive actions on your interactions to ensure your data management strategy is aligned with CCPA requirements.
While there are just less than six months remaining to get your enterprise CCPA-ready, adequate preparation is a major undertaking that involves substantial legal, logistical and technological input. Regardless of the effort required, though, with a Boy Scouts attitude in mind, "we will never fail when we try to do our duty. We will only fail when we neglect to do it." (Robert Baden-Powell)
To learn more about how we can help you with your CCPA compliance strategy for privacy and other regulations, check out NICE Compliance Center, or contact us to schedule a demo!
