We will help you take a snapshot of your critical privacy risks, so you can focus your compliance efforts cost-effectively. We will also identify opportunities for you to enhance your customer service, and cut costs by improving your information management practices.
We have extensive knowledge of the legal/regulatory context, information security risks to privacy and privacy best practices, including Generally Accepted Privacy Principles and the Privacy Maturity Matrix. This knowledge enables us to guide you through a process using questionnaires and structured workshops to quickly identify urgent risk areas where you have a gap between your privacy strategy and stated policies, privacy awareness and actual practices.
Good privacy practices, based on principles and standards, should become part of the way the organization routinely conducts business. If you want your privacy policy to be followed (and having a policy which isn't followed is more dangerous than no policy), all affected groups (e.g. marketing, sales, finance, human resources, information technology) should help develop it.
Since the initial development and implementation of the privacy policy will require more effort than its ongoing maintenance, many organizations will find that using external assistance is more likely to achieve effective results quickly. An outside perspective can also be useful to challenge assumptions and help you to think creatively about your information management and customer relationship processes. We can facilitate the policy development process with key executives and managers to develop privacy and security policies that will be accepted and enforced.
You can have a privacy advisor available 7 days a week to:
Review your privacy policy, procedures and forms
Advise and coach your Privacy Officer
Help you respond to customer inquiries or complaints
Alert you to breaking privacy news and events which you need to know about.
This is a cost-effective way for small and medium-sized businesses to get expert assistance as needed.
Your front-line staff are your first line of defence against customer complaints about your privacy practices. They must know what your privacy policy is, and be able to direct customer inquiries to the appropriate individual. We can train your customer-facing staff, either on your site or at our regular seminars, which are conveniently scheduled to minimize downtime during the business day.
Many businesses are extending previously internal processes to suppliers and customers via the Web, in order to reduce cycle time and cut costs. The resulting security issues must be addressed within an integrated risk management framework, which considers people, business policies, processes and physical environment, as well as information technology. We can help you to identify critical assets, threats and vulnerabilities using a structured workshop approach based on the OCTAVE (Operationally Critical Threat, Asset & Vulnerability Evaluation) methodology from Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute, then work with you to identify appropriate and cost-effective controls to safeguard critical assets and protect client privacy.
Business strategies should leverage technology to support the business strategic goals. Too often business and technology strategies are developed separately, leading to missed business opportunities and poorly thought out technology investments. We can assist your organization in the development of a technology strategy using facilitated workshops with senior business and technology managers to determine future business requirements, establish guiding principles and the technology architecture and define the strategic technology work program. We can also assist with mobilization of the program, including program management structure, program risk management, resourcing and benefits management.
Business Process Innovation involves rethinking and redesigning business processes to achieve breakthrough improvements with enabling technology. Process innovation therefore goes beyond either continuous improvement or simple automation, and anticipates significant organizational impact as well as high use of technology.
We have extensive experience in process innovation, including design of work structures and management systems, and in organizational change management. We use structured workshop sessions to refine the understanding of business goals, critical success factors and priorities for process innovation, and to set ambitious targets for productivity improvements. The workshops are then used as the foundation for system architecture and for structured rapid prototyping of new business systems.
It has become a cliché that people are the weakest link in the security chain. But they can also be your strongest assets, if they understand the issues and are motivated to support your security efforts. We offer customized on-site security training and awareness sessions for executives, managers and business users of information technology.
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