How to Sell a Privacy Solution to your IT and Security Teams

Maybe you’ve been tasked with finding a California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA) compliant privacy solution, are trying to address a gap in a Data Privacy Impact Assessment (DPIA), or your IT team is making infrastructure adjustments and moving to the cloud. However you came to the realization that your organization needs a privacy solution, convincing your IT team shouldn’t have to feel like an uphill battle. After all, privacy is crucial to enabling business growth in today’s day and age and, if you are in a highly regulated industry, it is essentially required. 

So, whether your goal is to instill a privacy culture within the organization, meet compliance requirements, or enable business growth by protecting proprietary business data, here’s how to make a case for a privacy solution to your IT team. 

1. Know Your Audience

What data management challenges are you dealing with as an organization? What keeps your IT and Security teams up at night when it comes to data management? According to research from Vanson Bourne, there are two major concerns when it comes to maintaining data privacy and security in the cloud: Managing data across multi-cloud environments and not adequately meeting regulatory standards. Both leave organizations at risk of suffering a data breach or incurring costly penalties.

While your IT and Security teams likely already understand these challenges, it’s up to you to advise them on how to enable the business to better handle these challenges, without sacrificing privacy.

2. Demonstrate that Privacy Powers Growth

Privacy boils down to one thing: preventing unauthorized access. Yet, multi-cloud environments and digital sharing workflows often leave private data at risk of exposure. Alongside new regulations such as the CCPA, organizations that place privacy at the forefront of business operations have a crucial competitive advantage.

To realize this advantage, first, think about what type of sensitive data is flowing in and out of your organization. The most common types are personally identifiable information (PII), protected health information (PHI) and intellectual property (IP). Consider reviewing these data management best practices to better understand your organization’s data landscape.

Recent research indicates that 54% of organizations are sharing data more frequently than they did last year, despite increasing privacy regulations, high-profile data breach incidents and public sentiment toward data privacy. The reality is that sharing data is essential within your organization and private and compliant sharing workflows enable business growth.

Therefore, the right privacy solution will address the need for secure sharing, compliance, and IP protection in the following ways.

• For 82% of organizations, sharing data externally is a fundamental part of doing business, with 44% sharing on a continuous basis and 26% sharing data daily. With secure sharing workflows, you can protect and control internal and external sharing workflows with employees and partners to maintain privacy for collaboration workflows that are essential to running the business.
• New compliance regulations are increasing privacy awareness and empowering individuals to reclaim ownership of their data, pressuring organizations to advance their privacy programs and develop processes to securely respond to data subject access requests (DSARs). In order to build consumer trust and loyalty, it is critical to safeguard private data related to customers, patients, or partners to maintain compliance with regulations like HIPAA, GDPR, CCPA, and more.
• To facilitate effective collaboration, innovation, and growth, IP must be both easily accessible and securely protected. After all, IP is the lifeblood of your organization. A privacy program will help protect IP and other proprietary data to power innovation, grow revenue, and maintain your competitive advantage. 

3. Find the Right Privacy Solution

In order to balance IT security priorities, keep business operations running, and maintain consistent data privacy, seek out a vendor that provides data-centric protection and granular access controls and visibility over who has accessed your data and when.

• End-to-End Encryption: Encrypt email and files directly within the client to prevent access by cloud providers and other unauthorized third parties. Fulfill data subject access requests (DSARs) for the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and CCPA for data subjects securely using end-to-end encrypted email and files. 
• Access Controls: Disable forwarding, set expiration, and revoke access immediately. Watermark files to deter data leaks. Apply persistent protection to maintain control wherever private files are shared.
• Persistent Protection: Take encryption one step further with data protection that travels with the data itself. Maintain control of encrypted attachments and prevent unauthorized access wherever they’re shared, ensuring privacy even beyond the initial email.  
• Data Loss Prevention (DLP): Detect private data in email and files and automatically enforce encryption and access controls through DLP rules to maintain privacy. 
• Granular Audit: View when and where private email and files have been accessed as they’re shared, and adapt controls for evolving access requirements throughout private data sharing workflows 
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Virtru as a Privacy Solution

Virtru protects sensitive data to ensure privacy. With end-to-end encryption, granular access controls, and powerful key management capabilities, Virtru accelerates privacy programs by preventing unauthorized access to keep data private, wherever it’s shared.  

Get in touch with us to learn how Virtru can accelerate your privacy programs today.