Compliance is crucial for businesses in new normal

Mohamed El Nemr In the wake of Covid-19, people are creating, sharing and storing data in new ways, but this has also introduced new risks. A recent internal poll revealed that providing secure remote access to resources, apps, and data is the key concern for chief information security officers. With penalties and fines for non-compliance set at a maximum of four per cent of a company’s annual global turnover – in an ever-changing industry, it is in firms best interests to remain complaint. In addition to talent shortage and complexity of compliance management, customers also face the need to comply with an increased volume and frequency of regulations, with hundreds of updates a day globally to thousands of industry and regional regulations. Additionally, complexity of regulations has made it challenging for organisations to know which specific actions to take and the impact of each. Solutions such as Microsoft’s Compliance Manager offers a vast library of assessments for expanded regulatory coverage, built-in automation to detect tenant settings, and step-by-step guidance to help businesses manage risk. It also translates complex regulatory requirements to specific technical controls and provides a quantifiable measure of risk assessment. It further provides a comprehensive set of templates for creating assessments to help organisations comply with national, regional, and industry-specific requirements on collection and use of data. Local laws, including Kenya Data Protection Act, have been mapped into the compliance manager tool to facilitate local compliance. New connectors have been made available that can pull data from other apps into the compliance, helping companies reason over, protect and govern that data. Having the right data protection and governance approach is critical to not only addressing regulatory compliance but also to mitigating risks around leakage. The extension of data loss prevention solutions to Microsoft Cloud App Security is a new capability that extends integration of content inspection across connected applications such as Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, Webex, One Drive and SharePoint. This extension will help users remain continuously compliant when using popular native and third-party cloud apps and helps to ensure sensitive content is not accidentally or inappropriately shared. With Teams usage growing, organisations are looking for seamless integration to keep data and employees secure and compliant. With volume of business conversations occurring round the clock in solution, additional security and compliance features have also been added. New features like Insider Risk Management now offers native integration with Teams to securely coordinate, collaborate, and communicate on a case with relevant stakeholders in the organisation. When an Insider Risk management case is created, a private Teams team will be created and bound to case for its duration. This team will, by default, include insider risk management analysts and investigators, and contributors such as HR and Legal, can be added as appropriate. Another feature such as Auto-apply retention policies for Teams meeting recording allow you to retain and delete recordings with in-place governance, which means retention policies apply wherever recordings are saved without the need to export elsewhere. In addition, Advanced eDiscovery supports live documents and links shared in Teams. This automatically collects documents from a storage location to pull the content into an eDiscovery case. The attachments are collected, reviewed, and exported along with Teams conversations so customers don’t need to manually find and collect documents one by one. We also continue to assist in keeping Teams data safe by encrypting it while at rest in datacentres. This has been extended to enable customers to add a layer of encryption using their own keys. These new capabilities will only go a long way in ensuring customers remain compliant. — The writer is the Modern Workplace and Security Business Group Lead for Microsoft Middle East and Africa Emerging Markets

Compliance is crucial for businesses in new normal

Latest News

Perfecting filmwork, one story after another

Endorsement by Mt Kenya Foundation will not change Raila – Raila Jr says

PNU, Ubuntu to sign first pre-election deal with ODM during Raila’s Azimio la Umoja event

Mt Kenya Foundation finally picks Raila Odinga for presidency

Mt Kenya tycoons holed up in meeting with Raila Odinga

Serve with courage, integrity and discipline – President Kenyatta tasks new GSU officers

Six Mount Kenya governors confirm their attendance to Raila’s Azimio La Umoja Convention

More on News

Regional MPs root for mangroves conservation

Perfecting filmwork, one story after another

Endorsement by Mt Kenya Foundation will not change Raila – Raila Jr says

PNU, Ubuntu to sign first pre-election deal with ODM during Raila’s Azimio la Umoja event

Follow us:

Compliance is crucial for businesses in new normal

Latest News

More on News

Every morning, our editors cut through the noise and send a digest of the day's top news. Subscribe here to get the digest and a free copy of our e-paper