Privacy

With data becoming the new cyber currency and data-gathering activities accelerating, companies are expected to demonstrate a commitment to accountability, lawfulness, transparency, and data protection. The rising tide of regulatory compliance and expansion of data across the extended enterprise requires organizations to re-engineer their business practices, redesign their data privacy policies and practices, and rearchitect their applications and backend infrastructure.

Too many organizations have yet to approach cybersecurity and privacy holistically. Policies that disclose how a customer’s data is collected, shared, stored, and used must be aligned with the processes & controls that operationalize those policies.

CohnReznick takes a strategic approach to helping organizations implement a comprehensive data privacy program. Using a proven data privacy framework, we help organizations establish an effective governance structure, improve policies and regulatory awareness, enhance data management practices, and devise a robust privacy strategy and roadmap. A holistic privacy management program can give organizations a differentiating, competitive advantage.

Policy & regulation awareness

CohnReznick helps organizations assess the validity of the mechanisms and resources in place to manage privacy within the organization. We do this by helping identify applicable laws, regulations, and gaps.

Data management

CohnReznick helps companies with the complete data governance lifecycle by conducting a comprehensive and accurate inventory of its data assets with appropriate classification, determining the different levels of access, implementing protection mechanisms, documenting retention requirements, and establishing secure disposal practices of the data and the assets across the organization’s environment.

Privacy strategy architecture and development

We help design an applicable privacy roadmap tailored to the company’s ecosystem to make certain the organization’s privacy strategy allows the company to continuously measure and improve operations and ensure continued adherence to changing privacy policies. It is imperative that the privacy strategy and architecture are well-defined and documented, and that policies, standards, and procedures are well-documented and communicated.  

Privacy policy and governance

CohnReznick helps companies develop privacy policies and procedures in alignment with privacy laws and regulations.

Privacy compliance

Many principles affect the operationalizing of a comprehensive privacy program. CohnReznick helps companies monitor compliance according to internal and third-party privacy policies. We help put a process in place for how to respond to requests from individuals (rights of “to be informed,” “access,” “rectification,” “erasure,” “stop processing,” and “data portability”) and conduct privacy awareness campaigns and training.

Security interface

We help organizations ensure that privacy requirements are embedded in the organization’s information security policies and procedures, and that there is a process in place to respond to privacy-related data breaches.

Our privacy lifecycle framework helps companies develop their privacy programs through six strategic phases.

 

advisory privacy

  • Select a stage to learn more.
  • Governance
    Establish the overarching organizational roles and responsibilities to help ensure the appropriate governance is in place to manage privacy within the organization.
  • Policy and regulation awareness
    Ensure the organization understands and plans to meet applicable laws, regulations, and other requirements related to privacy.
  • Data management
    Ensure that the company has a complete and accurate inventory of data assets, that it grants access to personal data only to authorized people, that the data is used, ethically, only for the purposes in which it has been collected, and that the data is secure.
  • Strategy and architecture
    Define and document privacy strategy, solutions architecture, and roadmap. The policies, standards, and procedures should also be defined, documented, published, and maintained.
  • Prioritize and implement
    Implement the privacy roadmap, solutions architecture, policies, standards, and procedures in a timely manner within organizational, technical, resource, and budgetary constraints.
  • Operations
    Respond to privacy-related data breaches and monitor compliance with internal and third-party privacy policies while also responding to requests from individuals (rights of “to be informed,” “access,” “rectification,” “forgotten,” “stop processing,” and “data portability”).
  • Continuous improvement
    Continuously measure and improve privacy operations to help ensure continued adherence to changing privacy requirements.
Bhavesh N. Vadhani
CISA, CRISC, CGEIT, PMP, CDPSE, Principal, Global Leader, Cybersecurity, Technology Risk, and Privacy
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