No matter which industry you are serving- health care, manufacturing, or finance, there are a set of rules and regulations that you need to abide by for ensuring safety and security of the products and services you are processing. Minor compliance negligence and you or your business might be subjected to hefty fines or end up fighting a legal battle.
Regulatory scrutiny can be rigorous and always an open door for repercussions, which can be avoided by being critical of every process, right from the basic level i.e., strengthening your front line of defense with educating the employees dealing directly with the customers.
Let’s start with the mistakes that you should avoid in devising and executing regulatory compliance policy, to steer clear of auditing and the possibility of tarnishing your reputation:
- NOT COMPREHENDING THE STANDARDS:
We have seen many compliance breach cases wherein the business operator unknowingly overlooked specific guidelines and end-up paying a hefty price. It is essential for the business owners and everyone involved in making critical business decisions to understand the rules and regulations before going ahead entirely. A profitable move would be to seek the guidance of a professional regulatory compliance management firm.
- DOING IT YOURSELF:
While we understand that the business is being run on your vision, it is not necessary that every business owner will have the required amount of knowledge of regulatory standards pertaining to the industry in which they are operating. You need the help of a third-party compliance management firm that can ensure you abide by the rules and provides maximum protection.
- IMPLEMENTING OLD TECHNOLOGIES/POLICIES;
Similar to any process or technique, compliance requirements and technologies need to be timely updated; otherwise, your obsolete technical implementation might land you in trouble. Lack of modern technology will lead you to set up the wrong metrics for quantifying compliance and erroneous output. You would need the latest compliance technology to be able to adequately and accurately analyze the data.
- OVERLOOKING INTERNAL COMPLIANCE AUDITS:
Instead of waiting around for an audit, we would suggest periodically analyze and work on the compliance policies and how they are executed so that any gap can be promptly fixed. By conducting an internal audit, you are preventing the organization from problems that you might not have the time to identify at the time of regulatory auditing. It will minimize the probability of you and your organization facing a compliance issue at the time of proper auditing.
- OVERLOOKING PHYSICAL SECURITY:
While online security is prominently at risk of cyberattacks, it is equally important to not overlook the physical security risk s in the organization. Make sure that the physical environment is just as safe and secure as the virtual one by safeguarding physical access and document repository.
- SUPERFICIAL APPROACH TO SECURITY:
Compliance regulation authorities expect organizations and businesses to enforce a comprehensive approach to ensuring security, but many go with fragmented ones and make themselves susceptible to breach and subsequent penalty. Including governance, processes, and people is necessary to ensure compliance and avoid the audit penalty.
Ensuring compliance throughout an organization or for businesses, be it SME or conglomerates, can be a complicated task. You need professional guidance to ensure that you don’t have to deal with the auditing or legal hassle in the future.
David Page and his firm of international attorneys hold significant experience in successfully managing issues pertaining to regulatory compliance. Having served as regulatory compliance for a premium Amerian-Isreali hi-tech company, David Page guidance, and legal counsel can help you stay on the right side of the law.
Reach out to David Page law firm today!
