Data Management Professionals (DMP SA) SA has introduced a compliance-as-a-service (CaaS) offering to help local organisations achieve continuous compliance under the recently introduced Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA).
Iniel Dreyer, MD at DMP SA, says compliance risk is a business risk, and if neglected can have serious and expensive ramifications for the business.
“The legislative requirement to identify and protect personal information has made businesses aware of the importance of using, deleting, storing, and managing data governed under PAPIA in a secure manner, as well as to mitigate the risk of data loss incidents such as ransomware attacks and data breaches,” he says.
Managing compliance and data security risks can be an arduous task, however, and many companies battle to get on top of all the requirements, including identifying personal information across production, backup systems, on-premises and clouds, where it is stored, who owns it and who has access to it.
It also means this data must be effectively protected, with a strategy around retention or deletion. Also, redundant data needs to be removed to lower not only risk, but storage costs too.
The CaaS solution from DMP SA will manage all of this, and will help businesses to quickly respond to e-discovery or compliance requests, to ensure they remain compliant with POPIA and other data privacy regulations.
Chris de Bruyn, operations director at Gabsten Technologies, a data management consulting company that recently joined forces with DMP SA, POPIA means organisations must have better insight into their data.
“However, budgets are under extreme pressure due to the current economic climate, and many businesses do not know where to start. We saw a gap in the market for a compliance solution offering the technology as well as the approach and aspects of the data reporting services around it. This led to the birth of our CaaS offering,” de Bruyn adds.
DMP SA will also help businesses identify what personally identifiable information they have in their unstructured data across production, backup systems, on-premises and across clouds, as well as SA-specific personal identifiable information, including ID and credit card numbers. Reporting is included, with workflows to review, audit and report on compliance initiatives.
“We also offer the option to retain your data in the DMP SA cloud located in South Africa, readily available with full integrity when and where it is needed. Our CaaS offering completes the data management picture, delivering a deeper understanding of the data we are protecting and using for business continuity and disaster recovery,” Dreyer concludes.