The benefits of outsourcing your IT are numerous. It lets you take advantage of professional IT knowledge and technology while concentrating on your main business. Additionally, you may scale up as needed without having to invest a large amount of money upfront, and for many firms, outsourcing IT is more affordable than handling IT tasks internally.
While there are several significant factors to take into account when thinking about IT outsourcing, compliance is one of the most vital. For instance, outsourcing your IT could make you more vulnerable to security breaches if you don’t take the necessary precautions, or it might hurt your company’s ability to comply with legal or industry requirements.
Before You Outsource
Before outsourcing your IT, there are a few things to think about, like what information and features you will give your service provider access to and which jobs can be delegated to others.
Defining the IT Tasks to Outsource & Business and Compliance Impacts
Determining which IT tasks to outsource is the first step in outsourcing your IT, as it is with any significant company transformation. You should also think about how these actions may affect the various divisions of your company. Will outsourcing these tasks cause any kind of disruption to your business?
More significantly, you need to find out if outsourcing IT will have an impact on different departments’ approaches to regulatory compliance. To put it another way, think about the possibility that outsourcing IT tasks could make your company non-compliant. At this point, you also need to determine how making such a change will impact your financial performance and capacity to continue in the company.
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Evaluating Your Service Providers
Outsourcing your IT needs is not something you should take lightly. Any time you contract out a business function to a different organization, you should confirm that the service provider:
- possesses the resources, capability, and ability to complete whatever duties you have outsourced
- Enough security, dependability, and service requirements are established
- complies with all applicable legislation
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Creating Contracts
Once you have determined which IT functions to outsource, selected a supplier, and reduced the associated risks, create a comprehensive contract with your service provider. This is significant because you are giving them access to some of the most vital components of your company, such as data, apps, and IT assets.
At this point, you should describe the many procedures that regulate the service provider’s delivery of the contracted services and how to maintain business continuity in the event of an emergency. This ought to include the duties that your internal staff members will carry out, such as management, testing contingency plans, compliance reviews, and due diligence.
It is also at this point to lay out the conditions for compliance. About matters of compliance, who is in charge of what? When and by whom is data security under responsibility? What guidelines and limitations apply to the use, transfer, storing, and accessing of data?
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Know Your Compliance Rules
Sometimes, guidelines on how to outsource your IT might be found in the standards published by certification bodies or regulatory bodies. For example, before disclosing protected health information to a third-party corporation, covered companies under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) are required to employ contracts known as business associate agreements.
Whether it’s the General Data Protection Regulation, HIPAA, the International Organization for Standardization, or any other regulator, you should know what is required for ongoing compliance and make sure that all necessary processes, technologies, and systems are still in place when you outsource your IT tasks when you hire a front-end or back-end, Python or Java developer.
After You’ve Outsourced
You have continuing obligations after the contracts are signed and your service provider starts working.
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Ongoing Reviews
After the contracts are signed, IT outsourcing continues. A team should be assigned to continuously watch over the supplier and the outsourced services. This group will
- Ensure that the key performance indicators (KPIs) you have defined for the availability, security, and integrity of your data and IT functions are being met by the service provider and any of their subcontractors.
- Supervise the service provider’s internal audits, assurance reports, and risk assessments.
- Keep your company’s business continuity strategies up to date, and make sure the service provider is taking all necessary procedures to guarantee business continuity.
- Create exit strategies that describe what happens when the tasks that are outsourced are completed. For example, they should specify how the application testing will be completed and how the service provider will handle any data that was gathered or kept throughout the engagement.
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Compliance and Security
When it comes to making sure regulations are followed, security is most likely your most important duty. However, outsourcing your IT can make your security weaker. Your systems, information, data, and IT assets are all subject to attack the moment you send data or grant a third-party access to them. These assets become less under your control, which might hurt how security procedures are carried out.
You can take some actions to improve IT security and guarantee compliance.
The first step is to understand the kinds of data that need to be protected to abide by various requirements, including:
Credit card information, social security numbers, IP addresses, marital status, religion, names, medical histories, and medication records are just a few examples of the sensitive data that many firms need to protect.
This group’s assignments include:
- detecting, evaluating, and analyzing risk as well as determining one’s risk tolerance are all part of risk analysis.
- installing security measures including firewalls, encryption, secure passwords, and vendor risk management.
Beyond the avoidance of fines and penalties, compliance has advantages. For example, being compliant with ISO:27001 can convey to potential clients and users that you are a reliable source for security. Because compliance requires you to keep records of your operations
, it will also help you stay out of trouble when conducting business.
- Exit Plans
You should not only be aware of what to do after duties that are outsourced are finished, but you should also have a well-thought-out exit strategy that outlines how your service provider contract will end.
Some events could have a detrimental effect on your compliance. The service provider may experience an incident that keeps them from performing their duties, fail miserably at the jobs they have outsourced, or go out of business.
The details of the exit strategy should include exactly how you will be able to retrieve your IT assets and data, as well as what the service provider may do as well as what will happen to it after disposal.
To summarize, let’s go over our stages again in the table below, where each has been condensed to make it easier to grasp and apply:
| Stage | Summary |
| Defining IT Tasks | Determine which duties to outsource with an eye toward compliance and business effects. Examine the potential eff ects of outsourcing on business continuity and regulatory compliance. |
| Service Provider Evaluation | Verify that the service provider can complete tasks successfully and that they meet security, compliance, and capacity requirements. |
| Creating Contracts | Specify the duties, procedures, and conditions of compliance. Incorporate data management, security, and backup procedures. |
| Compliance Rules Knowledge | Recognize the industry-specific compliance requirements, such as HIPAA, ISO, and GDPR legislation. |
| Ongoing Reviews | Keep an eye on the service provider’s performance and compliance with key performance indicators (KPIs) at all times. Assist with business continuity and create exit strategies. |
| Compliance and Security | Form a compliance team to handle documentation, threat response, security measures, and risk analysis. Security and compliance ought to work together. |
| Exit Plans | Make sure your service provider has a clear termination strategy that outlines how to retrieve data and IT assets as well as how your information will be disposed of. |
Compliance Considerations When Outsourcing IT
When outsourcing IT, there are many factors to take into account, but compliance needs to be your priority at all times. Keep in mind that you can outsource the tasks involved in compliance, but not the accountability. In the end, regulatory compliance for your business is entirely your responsibility.
Make sure your service provider is committed to compliance in addition to having the expertise, resources, and ability to satisfy your demands; this should be reflected in your contract. When the service provider takes over, your work continues. Even though there are many advantages to outsourcing IT tasks, compliance needs to be your priority to safeguard your company’s interests.
Conclusion
It is essential to put compliance first in your IT outsourcing projects to reduce risks and guarantee a successful collaboration. These 7 crucial compliance elements will help you safeguard your company and keep a solid, reliable working relationship with your outsourcing partner.
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