We’re now nearly 3 years on from the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and by now you should be pretty familiar with the concept. To Become GDPR compliant is a huge and important task for all businesses, old and new, and is something that companies have had to focus on in recent years. Failure to follow these guidelines can have real, serious consequences, not just for the business but also for their customers and partners too. It’s fair to say that this is one of the most significant pieces of legislation to come around for years, and businesses will need to approach GDPR compliance in a way that respects the core principles of what it is trying to achieve, whether that be company-wide or at a specific level within their organization.

What are the GDPR goals?

1. To increase the security of personal data.

2. To empower people to control how their data is used.

3. To prevent a data breach that could result in financial loss to companies, including fines of up to 4% of global revenue.

4. To ensure that decisions about processing are made in an objective and impartial manner, taking account of the interests of those affected.

5. To give people a full and accurate picture of how their data is being used, and for what purposes.

GDPR Checklist to GDPR compliance:

You need to be sure that your business has done/is doing the following:

  • Educating yourself and all members of staff on GDPR and your responsibilities as a business
  • Asking for explicit consent to collect data from all customers or users of your website
  • Setting out data consent policies by creating a Data Processing Notice for all customers/users
  • Quickly and effectively dealing with access and deletion requests
  • Mapping out all drives, clouds and devices that you store data on
  • Keeping note of how you’re asking for permissions and who has granted them
  • Encrypting all devices that hold sensitive data
  • Implement data security measures and processes to protect sensitive data
  • Appointing a Data Protection Officer (DPO) if necessary
  • Putting a data breach process in place which allows you to report a breach within the allotted 72 hours
  • Put change Changement in place

Using the checklist above to become GDPR compliant and see if you’re ticking all the right boxes. If there are some glaringly obvious gaps in your security and data protection, for example not gaining consent, then you need to rectify this right away. Do this by implementing new systems and processes to ensure you’re meeting all the criteria set out in the new legislation (as outlined above). You need to do this as soon as possible, otherwise you could land yourself in trouble with the EU governing bodies.

Use our information security toolkit to enhance your security program and be in compliance with major regulations like GDPR, CCNA, HIPAA etc.