When it comes to IT compliance, laws do not show any extra leniency to the small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) due to their size. When at fault, SMBs stand to lose as much as a large corporation. Larger companies, on the other hand, have the benefit of dedicated IT personnel who would help them get back to compliance within a short time. SMBs may not have this luxury. Given no extra consideration that can be expected from the side of law and the limited resources that SMBs enjoy, they have to find out a way to be in compliance.
Just like earlier times, companies are expected to keep their legal documents aside and safe and should make them available as and when requested by the regulatory agencies. The only difference right now is that the information can be stored and shared digitally instead of being on paper. This makes IT compliance and secure data storage a mighty important issue for the SMBs.
Maintaining compliance
IT compliance is only achieved if you have the ability to sift through all the information and data stored and are able to find the data that is most important, when needed. When examined closely, the method can be divided into three steps:
- Identifying the data needed
- Storing the data
- Retrieving it when required or asked for by the regulatory agencies
Given the limited resources of SMBs, the first step of data identification should be done very carefully. The cost of every redundant piece of data stored is pretty high for these businesses. However, higher is the cost of a valuable piece of information that has not been stored. The benefit that SMBs have over larger corporations is the smaller amount of data that has to be stored. Also, since there are fewer people accessing this data, security threats are less for smaller businesses than the larger ones.
By maintaining and backing up data to secure, redundant locations, SMBs can improve their data security and also keep files safe from getting compromised or crashed due to failure in the server. Keeping the files backed up and protected also ends up saving money for SMBs due to the cost-effectiveness of the model.
To find out how we can help your business maintain compliance, give KeeFORCE a call today at (270) 366-0553.
