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Data protection standards and frameworks

Laws and industry standards are two main sources of data protection practices, but they differ in their impact.

Not complying with privacy laws creates a risk of investigations and penalties based on complaints from individuals and associations. This can lead to significant fines and a loss of trust from a wider audience.

Standards are different: if you’re not standard-compliant, that’s not a crime, and most smaller customers likely won’t pay attention. However, standard compliance may play a big role in negotiating with large potential clients, especially those with established procurement practices and provider selection checklists. A standard compliance badge shown by your competitor may turn the tide in their favor.

Standards tend to be strict and specific, and you can often verify compliance with a standard by going through a professional audit. Privacy laws are, in contrast, fairly vague when it comes to technical implementation, and are open to various interpretations.

Compliance with both laws and standards requires significant effort, and finding the shortest path to compliance can be a challenge. You may need to comply with multiple laws, and you may want to follow more than one standard. How can you achieve this when facing a lack of time and resources? That’s where frameworks come in.

Frameworks are broader and more flexible collections of best practices and guidelines to help organizations achieve specific security goals, including compliance with laws and standards. The purpose of frameworks is to guide companies in building comprehensive security programs.

Some common cybersecurity frameworks and standards that emphasize data protection include:

  • SOC 2 Type 2: “Service Organization Control Type 2”. This is a cybersecurity compliance framework developed by AICPA. It’s specifically designed for service organizations that handle customer data, making it highly relevant to industries like SaaS and data hosting. It focuses on security control implementation with a strong emphasis on protection of customer data. If a company wants to prepare for an independent SOC 2 Type 2 audit, it needs to meet the criteria defined in the Trust Services Criteria (TSC) document.
  • ISO/IEC 27001:2022: “Information security, cybersecurity and privacy protection — Information security management systems — Requirements”. This is an international standard for establishing and maintaining an information security management system (ISMS) in order to protect sensitive information that a company owns or handles. Companies can use it to identify security risks, mitigate these risks with appropriate measures, and demonstrate compliance with legal, regulatory, and contractual requirements.
  • ISO/IEC 27002:2022: “Information security, cybersecurity and privacy protection — Information security controls”. This is another international standard providing guidelines and best practices for security and data protection. It outlines a comprehensive set of security measures, including organizational, educational, physical, and technological controls. In terms of data protection, this standard covers data discovery (classification and labeling of data), access control, legal compliance, data masking, data leak prevention, cryptography, secure system design, and coding.
  • ISO/IEC 29100:2024: “Information technology — Security techniques — Privacy framework”. This privacy framework defines a common privacy terminology, describes the actors and their roles in processing PII, and outlines methods for recognizing PII.
  • ISO/IEC 20889:2018: “Privacy enhancing data de-identification terminology and classification of techniques”. This standard defines and classifies data deidentification methods and their applicability for reducing the risk of reidentification. It covers various deidentification techniques, including statistical tools, encryption, masking, pseudonymization, generalization, and randomization.
  • SCF Data Privacy Management Principles. This is a set of simplified yet comprehensive privacy management principles that are mapped against 17 different data protection standards and laws, including the GDPR, the CPRA, SOC 2 TSC, ISO/IEC 27701, NIST Privacy Framework, and a lot more. It makes navigating the global privacy landscape considerably easier for international companies. These principles are grouped by topics including privacy by design, limited collection and use, data subject rights, incident response, risk management, and third-party management.
  • NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-53: “Security and Privacy Controls for Information Systems and Organizations”. This collection of security and privacy controls helps companies and governmental agencies in the United States manage and secure their information systems. It provides a comprehensive set of guidelines and best practices for implementing effective security measures and protecting sensitive information against various threats and vulnerabilities.