The continuous rise in cybercrime cases has necessitated countries across the globe to enforce data protection laws. One such law that’s been passed in the State of California is the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) that got signed in 2018, but its enforcement started on July 1, 2020. Every business with or without offices is expected to observe CCPA compliance to ensure consumer protection and safeguard privacy rights. This law is meant to assist persons in California to have control over the manner in which businesses access and share essential personal details.
As an entrepreneur, you must familiarize yourself with CCPA and remain compliant with it to avoid unwanted consequences. Here’s a CCPA guide on ensuring you observe the data privacy guidelines:
1. Find Out Whether CCPA Affects Your Business
The first step to ensure CCPA compliance is by finding out whether this rule impacts your company. CCPA seeks to safeguard the personal information of every person who’s a California resident. Because this law applies to the ‘natural person’ rather than the ‘legal person,’ it seeks to protect human beings rather than public corporations or private businesses.
The businesses that should observe this law are those providing goods or services to customers in California. Therefore, this law applies to companies in other regions globally such as Europe, Australia, or South America.
In addition, this law applies if your business collects your consumers’ personal information. According to the CCPA law, consumers have the right to know how companies are collecting their personal information and how this data will be used. It should also give the consumers a choice to opt out of the personal information that can be sold. Your consumers also need access to their personal information whenever they request it.
Other metrics that guide you to know whether the CCPA law covers your business include:
- Your company’s gross revenue is USD$25 million or more
- Half of your company’s revenue is from selling personal information
- You collect personal information for 50,000 or more devices, consumers, or households
Therefore, the best way to ensure CCPA compliance is by understanding how this law applies to you. This way, you make sure you’re compliant and you avoid getting sued by one of your consumers.
2. Make Sure Your Employees Are Trained On CCPA Compliance
You can’t run a company on your own as you’ll need help from your employees. Therefore, you need to ensure that any staff dealing with your consumer’s personal information should be trained on CCPA compliance. This is essential to ensure they observe the CCPA requirements and correctly answer any question on privacy compliance or practices.
Fortunately, there are many training certifications and courses your employees can undertake to learn more about CCPA compliance. The best part about this is there’s no structured training or specific requirements to get the qualifications. With that said, your employees, according to the CCPA law, are expected to have an excellent grasp of this legislation to be able to explain to a consumer looking to exercise their right but doesn’t comprehend how it works.
3. Have A Process Of Responding To Data Subject Access Requests (DSARs)
According to CCPA, consumers have the right to ask a business to delete all their personal information being stored. Such requests are known as data subject access requests (DSARs), and the business must respond to this appeal within 45 days, or in some specific cases, an extension of up to 90 days. If your business doesn’t know the exact location of your consumer’s data, this entire process becomes complicated.
You can avoid finding yourself in such a situation by observing a couple of measures such as:
- Recognize the systems where you’ll find the consumer information and the specific owner with whom you need to work together.
- Put in place a robust data retention policy to know where your consumer’s personal information is stored, archived, or deleted.
- Have a system to safeguard, unify, classify, and index information from different applications in one place. With such measures, it’ll be easier to find consumer data upon request.
4. Review Your Data Security Practices And Procedures
One of the CCPA compliance requirements is to ensure your business implements and maintains reasonable security practices and procedures. While nothing outright is mentioned, there are certain things you need to do, including:
- Perform a penetration test. After conducting a penetration test, you’ll be able to identify any vulnerabilities in your existing strategy or infrastructure.
- Implement a security framework. Having a security framework such as CIS Controls or SOC2 helps safeguard consumer data and enhance overall cybersecurity.
- Get a security management platform. With a centralized security policy platform, you’ll be able to remain CCPA-compliant. You get to accomplish this as your company’s policies are up-to-date.
Takeaway
Data is the new gold with society becoming more data-driven than ever before. If you operate a business that collects the personal information of your consumers online, then you’ll need to observe the data privacy regulations laid down in the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). If you don’t know where to start, this detailed article has taken you through the different ways you can make sure you’re compliant with CCPA.
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