Last Updated on March 16, 2023 by Gui
In our previous blog post on GDPR compliance, we highlighted the importance of controlling email as part of your data governance strategy. Today we explore the human side of the equation, and the need to integrate information governance and collaboration seamlessly into workers’ daily processes, habits and applications.
The GDPR is compelling every business to consider how to respond to today’s security and compliance challenges. The legislation will require significant changes to how businesses gather, use, and govern data.
Organizations face mounting regulatory pressures to better manage information and email records, to ensure that they don’t get into the wrong hands. This pressure is passed on to users and employees who also have a duty of care when it comes to data protection.
Employees may know they have a responsibility to protect information, but human error and lack of training on corporate data governance policies still pose a large threat. Employees are using more SaaS apps such as SharePoint, creating more data, and working across multiple mobile devices to sustain productivity levels. While this has enabled people to do more, it has also increased the risk of data loss – it is estimated that 58% of workers have accidentally shared critical data with the wrong person.
Research also shows that it’s almost impossible to get users to capture emails as records, particularly on mobile devices. Stranded information in inboxes can become a “smoking gun.” During e-discovery, emails in PST files or locally cached cannot be located or put on legal hold. Lost or stolen devices pose further threat.
It’s also important for business to control the cost of compliance. By centralizing email and document records in SharePoint, it takes just minutes rather than days to find all relevant records, to fulfill a request or to expedite an e-discovery process during a legal case so the cost to business is greatly reduced.
Here are some ways you can balance the equation and make it easier for your workers to comply with your governance processes:
- Centralizing deployment of content and policies will ensure swift user adoption and data governance.
- Compliance is made simple if technology is seamlessly integrated into the way employees are already working. If it’s easy to do in their everyday working environment, users will easily comply with information governance and records management policies without hampering productivity.
- Make it easy for employees to move emails to a records management system such as SharePoint, and to classify messages either manually or automatically.
- Choose a solution that allows IT to centrally configure which SharePoint locations employees have visibility to as part of onboarding.
Staying ahead of the trends is key, as is relying on a technology provider who is certified as a Microsoft SharePoint partner, and dedicated to solving the email management balancing act. With Colligo your organization can close the big gap in a seamless way for users and employees whilst taking a step toward GDPR compliance.
