Why Your Business Needs GDPR Compliance
The GDPR is a legislative order that applies to any entity that handles the personal data of EU individuals. This law is the most significant change in data privacy in 20 years. Everyone who handles data or sells goods or services to EU citizens has obligations under the GDPR.
And GDPR compliance isn’t just crucial for big companies; it applies to small businesses. It’s a complex law, and it’s left a lot of companies scratching their heads about how to make sure they’re compliant.
Benefits of Being GDPR-Compliant
Compliance Is Important for Selling Goods and Services to EU Citizens. If your organization handles the data of EU citizens, you have an obligation under GDPR to protect that data, regardless of where your organization is located. There are many reasons why businesses should care about GDPR compliance.
More Data Protection
The GDPR ensures that people have increased control over their data and limit the number of personal data collectors can collect from them. This will lead to more transparency regarding how and why a company collects personal data.
Enhance Your Cybersecurity
Under the GDPR, companies must protect the data they’ve collected, including implementing strong security measures to protect it against theft or loss. You must take every precaution possible to ensure customer data is protected and that it won’t be compromised.
Gain Trust from Consumers
By being transparent about the information you collect, how it’s used, and how it’s secured, you’ll be putting your customers at ease. This will provide them with the assurance they need to keep doing business with you and possibly suggest you to their friends and family.
Differentiate Your Brand from Competitors
By investing in GDPR compliance, you’re taking a proactive approach to your customers’ data privacy needs. This will make you stand out from your competitors, who may adopt a more laid-back approach. Your business will look current and forward-thinking, which can only help to improve your brand image and reputation among customers.
How to Be GDPR-Compliant?
It would help if you concentrated on the following areas:
Awareness
If your company isn’t educating its employees and customers about the EU privacy rules, they could cause damage without even realizing it. Everyone has to understand the law as well as its implications.
To make sure you’re GDPR compliant, you need to ensure that your employees know how their data is processed, how they can request access, and what action to take if something goes wrong. It’s also necessary for your company to supply customers with information about privacy policies to know what’s happening with the data they share with your company.
Data Subject Requests
You need to put in place a process how individuals – like your customers and employees – can exercise rights regarding their data. Under GDPR they can, for example, request access to their data, ask to correct data, or even delete their data (when not necessary anymore or processed illegaly).
Processing Subject Access Requests
The GDPR requires that your company registers all processing of personal data. This means you have to register your data processing activities on an ongoing basis, which may be time-consuming. You also have to check that the information you need for registration is accurate and complete about how personal data is processed.
Processing Personal Data
Your company has to take special care when it handles personal data because high protection standards must bind anyone who handles such information. Your company needs a privacy policy that informs people about the use of their data and the types of parties your company shares their information with. You need to provide all information relevant for registration and ensure you have specific procedures for data protection.
What Can Affect GDPR-Compliance?
There are many ways to breach the GDPR. First, and foremost, every company needs to know what data it holds and collects, and how and why it is used. Ghost assets are often overlooked, but they can affect the GDPR compliance of a company. Company needs to know all its data and IT assets. This also means need for good vendor assessment and management process.
Non-compliance can also result from hacking and other kinds of cyberattacks. Therefore IT security measures must be implemented. And company should be able to quickly assess damage, what data has been affected and what are risks to individuals. Any data breach must be reported to data protection authority withing 72 hours from discovery.
Conclusion
While it is not easy to achieve GPR compliance, it is crucial part of any organisation doing business in European Union. And while GDPR does create challenges and pain for us as businesses, it also creates opportunity. By achieving GDPR compliance, the most important thing you will gain is that it provides long-term data security and data privacy in which customers can trust you and your business.
If you’re interested in learning more about GDPR-Compliance, check out more articles in our blog.
