Six steps to mastering data privacy and compliance in Workday
In today’s digital landscape, data privacy and compliance have become key concerns for organisations. As Workday users, ensuring the security of sensitive information and maintaining compliance with regulations are top priorities. To guide organisations on this journey, Amanda Monrad, Head of Smart Audit Strategy at Kainos, outlines a strategic six-step approach to achieve proactive data security and compliance in Workday.
Operational data privacy and compliance challenges
In the realm of data privacy and compliance, Workday stands out for its robust support capabilities. By offering audit logs that track changes to business objects or transactions and highly configurable security, Workday provides customers with powerful tools to mitigate risks associated with internal threats, weak security controls, complex implementation requirements, and evolving organisational structures.
However, despite these functionalities, many Workday customers still face challenges in maintaining proactive data security and compliance measures. From conversations with Workday customers, a recurring theme emerges: while compliance and regulation needs are often the initial focus, concerns about reactive security measures soon come to light. The transition from reactive to proactive security approaches becomes imperative, prompting discussions about leveraging automation to bolster security postures. Among the prevalent challenges faced by Workday users are immature controls, insider threats, insufficient oversight of access, and managing the impact of change. These challenges, compounded by factors like limited resources, inefficient processes, and evolving regulatory landscapes, underscore the need for a comprehensive and proactive approach to data privacy and compliance.
Addressing the challenges - The six step approach
Whether focusing on compliance or privacy, Workday users embark on a journey characterised by careful planning and strategic implementation. Addressing the challenges of data privacy and compliance requires a systematic approach.
Step 1: Setting policies and expectations
Ensuring a uniform approach to data privacy and security throughout your organisation is imperative, with the establishment of a comprehensive organisational policy serving as the initial step. Once this policy is defined, it can be seamlessly applied to your Workday program, providing guidelines for proper and improper use along with associated implications. Additionally, your policy serves as a framework for implementing consistent processes and mechanisms across all departments and applications within your organisation, ensuring adherence to data privacy and security standards.
Step 2: Establishing your data privacy risk framework
Similarly, understanding and documenting your organisational data privacy and security risks, along with your risk assessment approach, is crucial for prioritisation and focus. Establishing an organisational standpoint on data privacy and security risks as a reference will facilitate the application of these considerations to your Workday program. Once your framework is established, conducting a thorough risk assessment becomes critical to pinpoint potential privacy and compliance risks specific to your organisation. This assessment serves as the foundation for identifying and mitigating risks through the implementation of controls and policies.
Step 3: Prioritise privacy and controls from the start of design
Integrating data privacy and security controls during the architectural and design phase of your Workday deployment streamlines the process of designing and implementing these measures. This approach facilitates the creation of seamless, embedded controls within your system. Additionally, establishing preventative security controls, restricting access, and educating employees on their responsibilities in safeguarding Workday data are more manageable tasks when addressed during implementation as part of change management. Nonetheless, deploying a privacy policy, processes, and controls remains feasible at any point in your organisation’s lifecycle.
Step 4: Develop your Workday risk assessment and controls
Build your Workday risk assessment and controls to gain a comprehensive understanding of your Workday data and security landscape spanning multiple tenants. Evaluate your stored data and the capacity to demonstrate compliance effectively. Kainos has conducted a thorough risk assessment across key Workday areas, culminating in the creation of a Risk and Control Matrix (RACM), offering tailored internal controls designed specifically for Workday. This, coupled with your organisation’s broader risk assessment, enables you to:
• Implement preventative security controls
• Restrict access and enhance existing measures
• Mask data in lower tenants
• Explore automated testing using synthetic worker data to safeguard sensitive information during testing; and
• Educate employees on their pivotal role in safeguarding Workday data and security
Step 5: Engage with Workday experts
Having established your organisational approach, it’s crucial to consult with Workday experts to tailor your policies, risk assessments, and controls to meet your specific data privacy and security goals within the Workday environment. At Kainos, we offer access to seasoned professionals proficient in Workday, data security, privacy, risk assessment, and internal controls. Partnering with our experts will provide you with valuable insights into Workday’s distinctive functionalities and enable you to design and implement effective processes aligned with your objectives.
Step 6: Leverage Workday security and compliance automation
Kainos Smart helps to streamline security monitoring, detection, and response processes. By leveraging automation for this purpose, you can increase risk coverage, enhance operational efficiency, and bolster your overall security posture.
Smart Audit and Smart Shield, provide comprehensive protection across the entire Workday estate. Smart Audit offers crucial oversight by monitoring data security in production, promptly flagging unauthorised access and potential breaches. Meanwhile, Smart Shield adds an extra layer of data privacy control, allowing organisations to mask business-critical and sensitive personal or financial data within non-production environments. This ensures that sensitive information remains safeguarded, even during testing or development phases.
Additionally, Smart Test can further also mitigate data privacy risks. This automated testing platform utilises synthetic worker data, minimising the exposure of sensitive information by reducing user interactions with such data. By deploying Kainos Smart, organisations can achieve full privacy compliance and confidently safeguard data.