At the same time that organizations work to simplify and minimize their data footprint to address privacy and cybersecurity risks, there has been a simultaneous rise in the decentralization of technology and dispersal of business data across rapidly changing mobile and cloud technologies. That distribution has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the greater adoption of remote work. These mobile and cloud technologies are easy to implement and update and provide undeniable business benefits. However, they also exist outside the organization’s firewall, are difficult to monitor, manage and control, and bring with them a host of new privacy and cybersecurity risks. Legal and Compliance must keep pace with this dispersed technology landscape in order to implement and enforce appropriate controls to ensure compliance with privacy, security, regulatory and legal requirements.

Application Proliferation

Ever-increasing innovation has led to a paradigm shift in the technology services market. Full suite offerings by large providers have begun to give way to tailored, focused, and smaller providers. These providers offer specialized services that can be readily implemented and adopted, and often are not easily replicated in existing systems. The rapid adoption of such technologies—particularly with customers—creates enormous business pressure to demonstrate technological savvy and keep pace with customer demand. But with the sprawling use of third-party applications outside the firewall, business, legal, and regulatory risks mount.