Data Management Professionals (DMP SA) South Africa has launched a Compliance as a Service (CaaS) offering to help local businesses with ongoing compliance under the Protection of Personal Information Act (PoPIA). 

“Compliance risk is a business risk, and if overlooked can have costly consequences for your organisation. The legislative requirement to identify and protect personal information has made businesses aware of the importance of using, deleting, storing, and managing data governed under PoPIA in a secure manner, as well as to mitigate the risk of data loss incidents such as ransomware attacks and data breaches,” says Iniel Dreyer, MD at Data Management Professionals South Africa. 

However, navigating compliance and data security risks can be a time-consuming challenge, and many businesses struggle to come to grips with the requirements. This includes the ability to identify personal information across production, backup systems, on-premises and clouds, as well as where it is stored, who owns it and who can access it. It also requires such data to be effectively protected, with a strategy around retention or deletion, and redundant data must be removed to reduce risk as well as storage costs. 

“With PoPIA being in effect, businesses need better insight into their data. However, budgets are under extreme pressure due to the current economic climate, and many businesses do not know where to start. We saw a gap in the market for a compliance solution offering, the technology as well as the approach and aspects of the data reporting services around it. This led to the birth of our CaaS offering,” says Chris de Bruyn, Operations Director at Gabsten Technologies – a data management consulting company that recently joined forces with DMP South Africa.  

DMP SA’s CaaS offering helps businesses avoid non-compliance penalties while keeping data secure and in the right hands. Through CaaS, businesses can gain access to leading enterprise technology combined with data management expertise as a monthly operational expense. 

DMP SA will help businesses to identify what Personally Identifiable Information (PII) they have in your unstructured data across production, backup systems, on-premises and across clouds, as well as South African-specific PII such as ID numbers and credit card numbers. Reporting is included, with workflows to review, audit and report on compliance initiatives. 

With CaaS from DMP SA, businesses can improve security and management of sensitive information within the organisation and prevent undesirable exposure of data. In addition, it empowers businesses to rapidly respond to eDiscovery or compliance requests, for complete confidence around PoPIA and other data privacy regulations.  

“We also offer the option to retain your data in the DMP SA cloud located in South Africa, readily available with full integrity when and where it is needed. Our CaaS offering completes the data management picture, delivering a deeper understanding of the data we are protecting and using for business continuity and disaster recovery,” Dreyer concludes.