Regardless of your industry, compliance is a critical part of business operations. While it might take a lot of time and money to get right, managing compliance is important to avoid any fees or loss of reputation down the line.

But in 2024, remaining compliant isn’t just about avoiding negative consequences. Yes, a lack of strong compliance can lead to fines, penalties, operational downtime, and reputational damage, but the act of compliance itself can be a financially positive attribute for your company.

Compliance Excellence in 2024

Whether it’s by removing your social platforms or opting out of data brokers completely, any user has the ability to manage their digital footprint and ensure that their data doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.

More consumers than ever are taking this option, too, as the subject of data privacy has become more notable in recent years. With notorious data breaches awakening the public to the problem, strong data privacy initiatives have become a key business trait that consumers look for – which is part of the reason why browsers like Brave, Firefox, and Opera have experienced a nearly 50% increase in users over the last few years.

Top brands like Apple, Slack, and DuckDuckGo have capitalised on this shift in public consensus, utilising data privacy and ‘compliance excellence’ as marketing tools to reassure potential customers and drive more sales. Just take a look at this creative 3D billboard that WhatsApp launched in 2022 – focused entirely on privacy and security features, the ad looks to captivate an audience with its privacy initiatives alone, putting itself ahead of competitors based solely on user security.

Going the Extra Mile

In this way, achieving compliance excellence has not only become a necessity in 2024 but it’s become a key marketing strategy – working to both entice new customers and reassure existing customers of their complete security. But achieving it isn’t as simple as just reading through compliance principles – lawfulness, fairness, purpose limitation, accuracy, storage limitation, accountability, and confidentiality – and following the rules to a tee. This is not a checklist exercise.

In order to really provide security, organisations must exercise enhanced cyber hygiene, building the appropriate infrastructure to nurture the perfect system that is resilient against even the most advanced cyber attacks. This starts with securing a budget. Instead of seeing cybersecurity as a cost that will slow down your other business processes, you must look at it as a key brand philosophy that must be given the appropriate time and finances.

Navigating Privacy Laws With a ‘Cybersecurity First' Mindset

Your consumers are increasing online safety by thinking ‘security first’, so you need to do the same thing. If you think ‘cybersecurity first’, then you can change the brand’s mindset from reactive to proactive, and similarly bolster your security through excellent compliance management.

To do this, you need to see cybersecurity training as a must, getting your team onboard by teaching them about the potential risks and assigning each member a key role in security – approximately 88% of all data breaches are caused by human error, so the human element is a key part of a solid cybersecurity infrastructure.

As well as this, one of the key factors of data privacy compliance is appropriate, fair, and legal data collection and storage. The problem with this is that many companies collect huge amounts of data and then proceed to sit on it once it’s fulfilled its use case. But no piece of data should be dormant. If your data isn’t being used to elevate your business and the consumer experience – nor as an asset to bolster your cybersecurity efforts – it needs to be deleted.

There are too many companies out there that are sitting on dormant data, making it needlessly vulnerable to cyber breaches while clogging the network with data that simply isn’t needed. A streamlined network is a network that offers easy observability, clear management, and less risk – so make sure you strive for this and help optimise your own cybersecurity plan.

Conclusion

As we mentioned before, data privacy laws are not a checklist that should be ticked and forgotten about. In many ways, they should be the blueprint for your company – a foundation that you can build on top of. If you do this, then you are both making your organisation more marketable and secure against breaches in the future.

That’s not to say attacks won’t happen, of course. But if you go the extra mile to achieve compliance excellence, you’re strengthening your shields and making the business more resilient, giving it the best chance of survival should the worst happen.