When engaging with a company, you should determine whether or not that company is capable of protecting your precious data. This can be done with manual evaluation of policies, agreements and past incidents or with a compliance score provided by third-parties. In this article we will discuss how to check a company’s compliance score with hoggo.
Understanding Compliance Scores
As far as compliance scores are concerned, there is no clear definition of what a compliance score is. In best practice, a compliance score is a score that results from an automated evaluation of a company’s compliance posture, in relation to the privacy and security requirements the company must obey.
Trust is a vital component of any successful business relationship. By checking a company’s compliance score, you can gain insights into their commitment to privacy and security. This information allows you to make informed decisions about whether or not to trust them with your valuable data, ultimately safeguarding your interests and maintaining the integrity of your business relationships.
Key factors that influence a company’s compliance score include:
- A company’s privacy policies
- The security measures in place
- Its commitment to protecting your data.
- The company’s reputation for handling customer data should also be taken into account.
Introducing: hoggo’s Trust Grades
hoggo is an AI-driven platform that automates privacy and security assessments.
With hoggo’s platform, evaluating and comparing third-parties for compliance assessment becomes a streamlined and efficient process.
By providing automated privacy and security assessments, hoggo’s Trust Grades consider a company’s policies, procedures, measures, trainings, and risk mitigation steps, allowing users to quickly understand the compliance posture of different companies. This enables informed decision-making and helps businesses protect their valuable data.
How to check a company’s compliance score?
Step 1: Register or log in to your hoggo account
With hoggo, you can sign up for free and activate your account within a minute of signing up for the service.
Step 2: Look up your vendors, third parties or partners
You’re in! Now you can simply look up your vendors, third-parties and partners by using the search bar above or the different categories if you’re just browsing for a trustworthy solution.
- Step 3: Enter the company’s details (e.g., name, website)
If we don’t have the company that you are looking for yet, you can simply request it by filling in their name, website, privacy policy and data processing addendum (if applicable). If you can’t find the relevant links, no worries, we’ll do it for you.
Step 4: View and compare Trust Grades
Now that you have access, you can view and compare the Trust Grades of companies by browsing their Passports.
- Step 5: Interpret the results and understand the score breakdown
When you click on the different tabs, such as “General”, “Controller” and “Processor”, you can view and understand the company’s data practices when they control your data and when you share your data with them (and they act as a “Processor” under GDPR definitions).
Interpreting Compliance Scores
The Trust Grades assigned by hoggo are determined based on a combination of public policies and the company’s own input. hoggo analyzes a company’s policies, procedures, measures, trainings, and risk mitigation steps to assess its compliance posture.
If a company claims its profile and provides additional information, it can influence the Trust Grade assigned. The Trust Grades range from A (highest) to F (lowest), indicating the level of compliance demonstrated by the company.
Identifying areas of strength and weakness in a company’s compliance
When the company lacks transparency and information is missing from their policies, it affects their score. In order to improve their compliance score, the company should provide more information.
Trust Grades are objective and don’t take risk into account. You must add a vendor to your list of My Vendors to generate a risk score based on how you use their services.
Taking Action Based on Compliance Scores
Compliance scores allow you to identify high-risk vendors, third-parties and partners and shorten the privacy and due diligence process you need to conduct on them.
In addition, as a B2B company, you can use your compliance score to identify areas of potential improvement and take action based on them.
Finally, compliance scores can be used to set benchmarks to measure the effectiveness of any actions taken.
Compliance scores are a useful tool for assessing and monitoring a company’s data practices, regulatory status and overall related risks. With the help of a compliance scoring tools, like hoggo, you can make informed decisions fast.
Assess vendors, third-parties and partners with hoggo
Noa Kahalon
Noa is a certified CIPM, CIPP/E, and a Fellow of Information Privacy (FIP) from the IAPP. Her background consists of marketing, project management, operations, and law. She is the co-founder and COO of hoggo, which builds transparency around data privacy practices.