As more and more companies embrace technology and go online to conduct their business, they need to understand their legal obligations. Companies and governments are no longer view the Internet as playgrounds for people trying to experiment.
Today the Internet plays a crucial role in businesses. The Internet has gone from just being a communication platform to one where transactions are made daily. Along with the latter, personal data like credit card details are indiscriminately captured, manipulated, and even sold.
Governments all around the world are stepping in to protect the privacy of its citizens. Besides internal corporate policies and business legal documentation, regulators are introducing requirements for companies to have policies and documented procedures to safeguard personal data of their users.
Below is a list of policies that generally all corporate and online vendors should have on their website and internally within their organization.
On every website, below are some baseline policies you would want to include on your website. The first three would be a requirement by law.
- Cookie acceptance bar
- Cookie policy
- Privacy policy
- Terms of Use
Within an organizational, the following internal policies would supplement the above policies.
- Human resource policy
- Information security policy
- Data Privacy policy
If you are running an eCommerce business, you might further need to have the following policies
- Listing policies
- Payment policies
- Refund policy etc.
Do note the above list is not exhaustive as each industry have their own sets of governing regulations which would require them to take domain-specific policies. Take, for example, if you are in the financial sector, you need to further comply with Anti-money laundering policies as required by respective financial regulators.
This post was written to enlighten and help our reader in understanding what some of the legal documentation and policies they need to have in place to safeguard their online presence are. The list outline in this post should not be viewed as the final and complete listing of all policies and legal documentation need internally within the organization or on the website. Ultimately all companies have different business models and offer various services operating in different industries.
We strongly recommend that you check with your legal team or a specialized third-party legal service provider to ascertain what are all the complete set of policies and documentation needed.
