Privacy Compliance… are prying eyes viewing private information?

By Paul Johnson, President CMS – Complete Mailing Solutions

Since originally posting this blog, managing client privacy has become even more challenging in our COVID environment.  With many employees working remotely and less experienced workers taking on unfamiliar tasks, the difficulties of maintaining privacy compliance have increased. Greater awareness must be given to how communications are managed.  Business as usual is not an option any more. Read on to see if any of these apply to your organization.

The current privacy compliance pressures facing businesses in many industries, from healthcare to finance and manufacturing, have resulted in a heavy focus on the high-tech areas of IT and data security. But there is an often overlooked low-tech area that represents a prevalent risk, and it’s one that can be mitigated relatively easily and inexpensively.

Are your document handling and billing systems putting you at risk?

Mail handling, billing and customer communications are functions that have been around seemingly forever. Consequently, companies often mistakenly believe that they have these areas “handled”. Yet these are areas where customer privacy can be put at risk on a daily basis.

What if these risks could be fairly easily and inexpensively mitigated? Further, what if addressing them also resulted in reduced costs and increased operational efficiencies? Implementing processes and software to properly handle customer information and customer communications can deliver these results.

Here a few examples of commonly overlooked areas of exposure:

• Mail processing systems that do not prevent combining statements or invoices for two different customers.
  • You’d be surprised how often this happens and how easily it can be avoided.
• Mail being handled in a publicly accessible area by a secretary or receptionist.
  • If so, you’re not alone – this is a common practice and one that often puts customer information unattended within public view.
• Mismatched or “problem” mail left exposed in a public area while problems are being solved.
  • Not only is this process out of compliance but wastes valuable employee time to correct.
• Manually handling client documents with different numbers of pages and inserts.
  • This not only exposes private information to workers but is extremely inefficient and error prone.

These are just a few of the many areas where businesses put themselves at risk on a daily basis.

Want to do a quick check to determine areas where you might be at risk?

Download this free compliance checklist to identify often overlooked areas of exposure that may need attention.

Another great resource is the white paper from Quadient on How to Ensure Your Organization’s Mail Process is Compliant. It includes 8 best practices for mail compliance.

Interested in digging deeper? Learn more with our complimentary document handling compliance and cost reduction assessment.  Call us today at 303-761-0681.