Increasing privacy concerns and stringent laws such as the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) have placed the burden of implementing controls and policies to ensure compliance on organisations.  Iron Mountain Incorporated, the global leader for storage and information management services enabling digital transformation, has launched the Policy Centre solution to help South African businesses manage their information through the entire information life cycle – from creation to use to disposition.

According to an Iron Mountain South Africa dipstick survey, 58% of companies are concerned about the complexity of compliance regarding data management aligned to POPIA and 59% are concerned about the reputational damage of being seen as non-compliant^[1]. Organisations are faced with the challenge of ensuring they meet external regulatory and internal operational requirements. This means keeping the retention schedule up to date to comply with laws and regulations, so organisations can legally dispose of information when it’s no longer required. That’s challenging when the rules are constantly changing, and organisations lack automated tools to enable employees to understand what’s required of them.

Policy Centre is a cloud-based retention and privacy policy management platform that provides a user-friendly way for organisations to know their obligations and show compliance. It enables organisations to keep their retention and privacy policies current and reduce the risk of fines, save on information storage costs by confidently disposing of information and offer quick and easy access to the right information when needed.

“Our survey showed that a majority of senior managers are spending more of their time and resources making sure their organisations are POPIA compliant instead of focusing on more strategic initiatives and other business imperatives. Furthermore, organisations are also incurring unnecessary costs and risks by keeping information for longer than is required for legal, regulatory or business purposes. When there’s a policy change, many organisations aren’t easily able to communicate policy changes to information owners and show compliance to regulators. Policy Centre will be able to assist organisations tackle these challenges. Organisations will now be able to keep their records retention and data privacy policy management connected, current and compliant”, said Takalane Khashane, MD, Iron Mountain South Africa.

Policy Centre offers an adversary services team with deep information governance (IG) expertise that will guide organisations through the process of creating or revamping their information management policies for records retention and data privacy. Organisations will have access to Iron Mountain’s international network of law firms to know how privacy changes impact them so they can update their policies accordingly. They will also have access to tools to document critical information about processes that contain personal data, enabling compliance with the most relevant data privacy laws regulations, such as Section 17 of POPIA.

Policy Centre is available as three subscriptions that are tiered, based on the level and complexity of the organisation’s IG, records and information management (RIM) and/or privacy programme.

For more information on the Policy Centre solution please click on the below link: https://www.ironmountain.com/za/services/policy-center

[1] POPIA: The State of Readiness for South African Companies survey