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Breaking Old Habits: Achieving Compliance Through Cloud

29 Aug 2013

Most enterprises, be it large, medium or small, today need to pull up their socks in order to gain compliance with regulatory acts and laws. There are still many firms that fall prey to their old habits and fail to achieve compliance.

 

Government agencies, hospitals, insurance agencies, finance firms, legal firms, corporate, small businesses all alike need to improve their data and records management policies in order to bridge these gaps.

 

Breaking old habits

 

As the saying goes, old habits die hard. It is very difficult to change a habit and if we take into consideration the habit of an entire team or organization, we may even call the task impossible. No matter how open a company is to change, it takes time to adopt, implement and successfully apply changes.

 

What’s more, once new technologies are adopted and changes are implemented, a newer and better technology is introduced, making the older one redundant.

 

Let’s take information and data management policies of a company for instance. Companies started out with physical storage, sorting and maintenance. Computers replaced this and files were stored on PC. However, there was poor organization and access to this data.

 

Data management software was introduced to take care of this but access was still a problem. Cloud applications for data management took care of all these problems as a result of which collaboration, sharing and access became easier. The final result: zero chaos and compliance issues.

 

 

Achieving compliance through cloud

Most companies were hit by the realization a little late in the game, but once they finally opted for cloud services and applications, they could see the difference. This was their first step towards breaking the old habit.

 

Cloud based applications provide an indestructible storage system that enhances search & retrieval, backup, security and sharing & collaboration. This not only increases efficiency of an organization but also ensures compliance. Here are some of the major compliance requirements where cloud applications and services can help:

 

Cloud backup and restore

The most important requirement for HIPAA, SEC and many other acts is to ensure that data is protected from threats like fire, floods and failures (technical). Cloud applications ensure that your data is automatically backed up and the company is always ready in case of emergencies.

 

Data uniformity

Besides protecting data, another regulatory obligation is to maintain data uniformly across the organization. For instance, SOX demands that multinational companies having presence in various countries must have consistent filing approach. Cloud applications help companies to fulfill this obligation through a uniform system and approach to maintain files and data.

 

Data security

HIPAA, FDA, SEC, SOX, in fact almost all regulations state that companies must assess and have adequate security controls to protect their data. The bad reputation that cloud computing adorn because of security concerns, has driven more and more cloud application developers to take appropriate measures for warding off security threats.

 

Data retention

Data retention is a significant part of ISO 9001 and FDA compliance. It helps companies to dispose obsolete documents, neatly tag and organize old records that are kept for reference.

 

Data sharing and collaboration

Stagnant data is as good as dead data. Therefore it is important to share it and use it regularly. Cloud based applications help share and collaborate securely and more efficiently. Even regulations like HIPAA mention the importance of secure sharing and state the same in the act.

 

These are some of the main benefits of cloud that help achieve compliance. If your company is facing compliance issues or if you are looking to make your company compliant to industry regulations, Rishabh Software can help you. Talk to our experts at 1-877-RISHABH (1-877-747-4224) or fill in the contact form to find out more about our cloud applications and cloud integration services.