As technology companies scale, so does the complexity of their data ecosystems. From personal information and proprietary code to cloud infrastructure and global user data, tech companies face mounting regulatory scrutiny, sophisticated cyber threats, and the operational challenge of securing data across hybrid environments.
Managing data, risk, and compliance isn’t just about avoiding fines—it’s about building trust, ensuring resilience, and unlocking growth. This checklist offers practical steps for security, compliance, and data teams to align on critical areas: data visibility, regulatory compliance, incident response, and access governance. Whether you’re a startup or an enterprise tech provider, use this guide to assess gaps, strengthen controls, and modernize your compliance and data risk posture.
1. Data Discovery & Classification
- Identify all structured and unstructured data sources (on-prem, cloud, SaaS).
- Automatically scan for personal, sensitive, and regulated data.
- Classify data based on sensitivity, criticality, and usage.
- Maintain an up-to-date inventory of all data assets.
The BigID Difference: BigID uses AI & ML-driven discovery and deep classification to find all sensitive and regulated data—structured, unstructured, and semi-structured—across cloud, SaaS, on-prem, and hybrid environments, delivering unmatched accuracy, coverage, and scale.
2. Zero Trust & Access Controls
- Map who has access to what data (users, roles, permissions).
- Review and minimize unnecessary access privileges.
- Automate enforcement of least-privilege policies.
- Monitor and alert for anomalous or unauthorized access.
The BigID Difference: BigID strengthens your zero-trust strategy by reducing unauthorized access to overexposed sensitive data and overprivileged users for advanced access control and least privilege enforcement.
3. Data Privacy Compliance
- Map data flows to understand where personal data lives and moves.
- Implement consent tracking and data subject rights (DSR) automation.
- Conduct Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs) for high-risk processing.
- Establish mechanisms for data retention and deletion.
It applies to GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, LGPD, and others.
The BigID Difference: BigID’s AI-powered privacy suite supports cross-regulatory compliance, data minimization and retention enforcement, AI privacy risk management, and automated privacy rights fulfillment (DSRs, deletion, corrections).
4. Risk Management & Data Security
- Perform regular risk assessments and audits across data systems.
- Identify toxic data combinations and security policy violations.
- Encrypt sensitive data at rest and in transit.
- Implement real-time threat detection for sensitive data exfiltration or misuse.
The BigID Difference: BigID uncovers sensitive, regulated, and high-value data risk (shadow data, stale data, toxic combinations) with streamlined data risk assessment that reports on risk posture, access, AI use, and compliance requirements.
5. Third-Party & Vendor Risk
- Maintain a vendor inventory with data processing agreements (DPAs).
- Assess vendors for compliance with security and privacy standards.
- Monitor data shared externally and track cross-border transfers.
- Validate safeguards for data processors and cloud service providers.
The BigID Difference: BigID simplifies vendor risk management by proactively tracking third-party sensitive data access and assessing vendor data security and compliance posture.
6. Incident Response & Breach Readiness
- Establish an incident response plan for data breaches.
- Define roles, responsibilities, and communication protocols.
- Simulate breach scenarios regularly (tabletop exercises).
- Enable rapid detection and reporting of personal data incidents.
The BigID Difference: BigID quickly assesses data breaches by identifying exposed data, pinpointing impacted custodians, accelerating breach response timelines and streamlining compliance for faster, more accurate response.
7. Regulatory Compliance & Reporting
- Maintain an up-to-date register of applicable regulations (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA, DORA, NIS2, AI Act).
- Map regulatory obligations to internal data processes.
- Generate audit-ready reports for regulators and auditors.
- Track compliance posture and remediation progress.
The BigID Difference: BigID centralizes compliance reports that summarize insights and monitor key metrics about your data privacy, security, and governance initiatives to better understand risk and map controls to global data regulations.
8. Data Lifecycle Management
- Establish retention schedules aligned with legal and business requirements.
- Automate data deletion and archiving for expired or unused data.
- Monitor dark and orphaned data for risk and inefficiencies.
- Ensure backup and recovery procedures are compliant and tested.
The BigID Difference: BigID helps discover, govern, retain, archive and delete data across all environments—cloud, on-prem, and hybrid with intelligent discovery, ROT Reduction, retention policy management and secured deletion to reduce cost and minimize risk.
9. Policy Enforcement & Employee Training
- Regularly train staff on data security, privacy, and compliance policies.
- Distribute acceptable use and data handling guidelines.
- Test awareness with periodic phishing simulations or training modules.
- Monitor adherence to internal policies and flag violations.
The BigID Difference: BigID provides centralized, flexible policy management with well defined policies based on role, regulation, data type, region, purpose, and more—and enforce policies for access, retention, minimization, and transfers across your entire data ecosystem.
10. AI Governance, Security & Oversight
- Identify and classify all sensitive data used to train, test, and run AI models.
- Evaluate model access to confidential or regulated data in production.
- Restrict access to AI tools and data based on sensitivity and role.
- Monitor AI data pipelines for unauthorized activity or policy violations.
- Map AI workflows to applicable risk management frameworks and regulations (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA, EU AI Act).
- Continuously review and refine governance processes for human oversight and intervention.
The BigID Difference: BigID gives you the visibility, control, and automation to build, train, and deploy AI responsibly – curating high-quality data, minimizing risk, and protecting against leaks, breaches, and compliance gaps.
Why BigID Next?
BigID Next brings together data security, privacy automation, regulatory compliance, and AI Data Management, all in one platform built for the enterprise – and built to scale.
BigID Next helps tech companies operationalize compliance, reduce data risk, and achieve real, measurable control over sensitive data.
Let BigID help you check all the boxes on data, AI, risk, and compliance. Book a demo today.
