Products that handle personal, healthcare, or payment data should consider compliance requirements during architecture and product planning rather than treating them as a final checklist.
Common foundations include minimizing collected data, encrypting sensitive information, controlling access by role, maintaining useful audit logs, and defining retention policies.
Compliance is also becoming an important part of enterprise software purchasing. Buyers increasingly want to understand how security and data protection were considered during development.
Planning for compliance early does not mean over-engineering an MVP. It means choosing sensible defaults early so security and privacy do not become expensive architectural changes later.