Outsourcing systems or processes is a great way for a company to save money and reduce
the workload on some departments. A great example is outsourcing your AP department to
reduce the workload on your accounting staff and allowing them to focus on close or other
accounting projects. However, doing so also puts a company at risk because they need to rely on
the outsourced companies controls and processes to remain secure. Outsourcing to other
countries also means that the company doing the outsourcing will need to follow and adhere to
the law in the country they are outsourcing too. Some laws and requirements could be drastically
different and some legal protections in the United States might not apply in the other country.
What this means that is a breach does occur, the company might not be able to take legal action
or get the resolution they would in the states. b Another thing is that in other countries, data
protection such as encryption and controls like multiuser approval that are standard in the states
might not be applied or enforced. This could lead to easy access to your customers private data to
be stolen.
I believe companies should take total responsibility for their customers personal
information. Doing so is important as it would increase customers trust and might increase
business driving more revenue. By a company implementing controls over private data, it makes
the company compliant with SOX and would make audit much faster if the controls in place are
followed. I feel like most of the controls for private data would already be implemented to control
the companies’ private data which means that the process would be uniformed and cheap to
maintain. These processes can be implemented in a third-party company as well to standardize
the process and increase their controls as well. To make use the third party is following them, I
would have the contract include audit rights to make sure the processes where being followed.
Reference:
10 risks of offshore outsourcing. Scio. (2022, March 16). Retrieved December 9, 2022, from
https://sciodev.com/blog/10-risks-of-offshore-outsourcing/
Feinman, T. (2015, February 2). Companies need to take responsibility for protecting
Sensitive User Data. Entrepreneur. Retrieved December 9, 2022, from
https://www.entrepreneur.com/science-technology/companies-need-to-take-
responsibility-for-protecting/242355
Vijayan, J. (2004, February 20). Offshore outsourcing poses privacy perils. Computerworld.
Retrieved December 9, 2022, from
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2574317/offshore-outsourcing-poses-privacy-
perils.html#:~:text=WASHINGTON%20--
%20Outsourcing%20jobs%20to%20offshore%20destinations%20can,and%20Data%20
Security%20Summit%20here%20warned%20this%20week.
