A new year has begun, and January is always a good month look again at some core principles when it comes to the delivery and management of global payroll. One of these principles is data security and the importance of safeguarding what is always hugely sensitive and often personal employee information from cyberattacks and data breaches.
There is no room at all for complacency when it comes to payroll delivery and cybersecurity. Like many other business critical service deliveries, trust has an important role to play in global payroll. Trust is core to a company's reputation and every global employee needs to feel reassured that their personal and pay related data which forms a major part of global payroll processes, is in safe hands at all times.
The beginning of a new year is often a good time to do a thorough and comprehensive review of any cyber security and data protection protocols you have in relation to the delivery of global payroll. The nature of global payroll is nuanced and international-there is therefore a requirement for payroll data to flow between several different payroll systems, and this creates risk, especially if these data flows are not protected by strong levels of digital platform cyber security.
In this article we will look at the importance of cyber security for global payroll data and some steps that multinational companies can take to safeguard important employee data and payroll information
Stop using excel spreadsheets
It may be hard to believe in 2022, but many global organizations still process their international and multi-country payroll by using excel spreadsheets. They also have a tendency to share and send these spreadsheets containing sensitive data such as social security numbers and other confidential information via email.
These methods are as flawed and insecure from a data perspective as they sound. They are also slow and cumbersome ways to deliver global payroll, especially when vast amounts of data is required to pay thousands of employees around the world. It’s a big cyber risk for data privacy, identity theft and ransomware attacks, so a risk management strategy is needed to avoid some major security breaches.
What is the alternative? The answer is to digitally transform your payroll delivery process. move to a global payroll control platform and operate in a secure cloud environment where multi-country payroll is digitized.
A digital platform in a cloud environment immediately improves cyber security when it comes to payroll information and data protection. The latest industry standard data and cybersecurity protocols are often a part of the digital software when operating in the cloud. They are designed to protect sensitive information and help prevent scams, hackers and cybercriminals gaining access to sensitive data held in the payroll department.
Authorizations and user authentication can then be introduced, and this ensures that only qualified and relevant global payroll professionals, have access to and the ability to edit or change payroll data. Furthermore, digital software can record and audit any of these changes so there is a digital record that explains the reason why these changes took place. It is hugely important from both an internal and external security audit perspective, that there is a process to clearly identify who interacted with payroll data and why. This can only be monitored and managed on a digital cloud platform designed specifically for the delivery of global payroll.
Data lifecycle management
Payroll data, like all important and confidential company data, should be protected and monitored inside prebuilt data lifecycle management conditions. This is about applying structured and disciplined security systems and measures to document management processes within the global payroll team or human resources team where professionals interact with employee data.
An identifiable and cybersecurity backed process needs to be put in place so that global payroll data is supported by strong internal security protocol measures throughout the lifecycle. This is about creating end to end security and document management for data compliance and process control. This needs to happen for compliance, GDPR and regulation reasons as well as cyber security reasons so there is a clear business case to implement it as soon as possible to avoid data breaches and damaging cyberattacks.
Access and data exchange cybersecurity measures
Companies are growing at a faster rate than ever before, and this creates a need to pay lots of different employees based in many different locations around the world. Because payroll is nuanced and local to every country, there is a need to engage with a local country provider to process and manage the payroll for that country. Data will need to be exchanged between the source company and this international payroll provider.
This is a multi-country and multi-vendor payroll environment, where it can be challenging to properly identify, collect and protect sensitive data which can be held across multiple systems and locations.
It is essential that any data exchanges are protected by the best data protection and security measures available. Again, a digital cloud environment or a global payroll control platform is the best way to ensure this level of security. Inside an environment like this, there are security mechanisms to facilitate the safe requesting, exchange and management of sensitive company data via secure centralized data imports. Strong global payroll integration functionality is recommended here, especially as a scaling organization is likely to need additional local country payroll providers to be added to their network as their company grows.
Measures should also be taken to ensure that payroll information fields are set up and listed country by country so that a global employer can assign PII (personally identifiable information) status to specific data. You should have a process with structured payroll registered data fields, unique to each country on your payroll. It is about creating a secure payroll data environment that protects personal employee information and ensures that all payroll data is collected, stored and managed in a secure and compliant way.
The ISO27001 framework
If you are interested in truly reassuring customers, clients and prospects about your global payroll data security measures, then the ISO framework should be a huge priority. Because ISO is an internationally recognized standard used across multiple different industries around the world, it tends to put people's minds at ease when it comes to the global payroll cyber security concerns.
If your information cybersecurity systems and technology infrastructure protect data in line with ISO27001:2013, then you are in a strong position to talk confidently about information security and data protection in your global payroll processing. An ISO certification is crucial when you want to provide evidence that you can handle PII data with proven security protocols which are underpinned by the latest data security measures and technologies.
ISO certifications help multinational companies around the world to identify and manage risks as part of an ongoing strategy around information security and data privacy. With them, you will have the knowledge and tools needed to implement a recognized framework for managing data, processes and IT systems in a way that safeguards your global payroll systems and data.
Payslip and global payroll data security
Payslip take data security very seriously and the ongoing protection of company and customer data is central to everything we do on our global payroll control platform.
Our platform and products have built-in data protection features to safeguard the transfer of any client data during the payroll process, either between company internal systems such as HR software and HCMs or externally out to a network of local country payroll providers.
The digital features on our platform also include audit trail functionality -the platform captures, automates and protects payroll data in its original and changing form, delivering a single view tracking of data transformation from inputs to outputs and visibility of how it changed, who changed it and when. This can help with internal audit protocols as well as external global compliance obligations.
Our technology and data are hosted and maintained within the EU and our information security and privacy technology infrastructure protect data in line with ISO27001:2013 and ISO27701:2019 principles.
We fully understand the sensitive nature of global payroll data and our platform operates with a range of security features to protect this data. We build and develop features that help us to identify and manage risks related to information security and data privacy so that we can always re-assure our global clients that their data is in safe hands.
For information on the Payslip Platform contact us today.