Cross-border data governance challenges and countermeasure suggestions for multinational corporations
Categories: Digital economy
Cross-border data governance challenges and countermeasure suggestions for multinational corporations
The development of the digital economy depends on the control and use of data elements, and the main nations and economies of the world are actively advocating the establishment of a rule structure for data governance. The global data governance standards will inevitably be dispersed and spread out because of the disparities in economic size, ideology, and development levels of nations and regions. The employees, clients, and markets of multinational corporations span multiple jurisdictions, which may cause a flow of various kinds and amounts of data between nations and regions. As a result, multinational corporations will face difficulties in complying with cross-border data governance regulations.
MNCs have a number of difficulties while conducting international business based on cross-border data flows as more and more nations and regions start to pay attention to and control these flows.
Globalization is a fundamental aspect of MNCs since they essentially use global resources to serve global markets. This includes both the globalization of people, business, and consumers as well as the globalization of technological systems and data. Except for the U.S., which typically favors the free flow of data across borders, other significant countries and areas have varied degrees of data localization restrictions due to the U.S.'s superiority over other nations in digital technology, products, and services. In fact, the U.S. has data localization standards for particular industries like credit, telecommunications, and health. As a result, there is a significant disconnect between the globalization traits of multinational corporations and the localization limitations of data governance. The expansion of long-arm jurisdictional regulations coupled with data localization restrictions has also had an impact on the globalization of MNCs. For instance, the U.S. Clarification of Lawful Use of Offshore Data Act's clauses might be in contradiction with local data laws in a number of different nations and areas.
The global economy is gradually transforming into a digital economy, and multinational corporations' capacity for and depth of data use will become one of their key capabilities and help to define their competitive advantages in the global market. As a result, MNCs must take the required steps to address the problems with cross-border data governance, which is a crucial question that MNCs must respond to in the age of digital civilization.
There are differences in the focus of rule concerns in different countries and regions, for example, the EU focuses on the control of individuals over data, the U.S. focuses on the benefits of disaster recovery backup, and China focuses on the unity of security and development, putting forward higher requirements. Based on the premise that no uniform rules or consensus have been reached globally, the worldwide data governance rules are characterized by diversity, change, and complexity. The concept of compliance for MNCs should go beyond only "complying to the law," as it now encompasses several aspects of national security, public interest, cultural traditions, and even customs. National security has been an important aspect for more and more governments to consider in data governance, particularly in the wake of significant instances like Prism Gate and Facebook Datagate. The global data compliance systems of multinational corporations need to actively apply a third Hyper-V backups, break the traditional compliance thinking, and deeply comprehend and adapt to the governance systems of other countries.