The European Union has some of the strictest data privacy and security laws in the world. They’re covered in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which went into effect in May 2018. Unlike most nations’ data privacy laws, the GDPR applies to any organization, anywhere in the world, that targets or collects data associated with EU citizens. Thus, it makes sense for any business owner who plans to do business with EU organizations or citizens to familiarize themselves with GDPR compliance best practices.
The Importance of GDPR Compliance
The GDPR was implemented to protect the rights of consumers. Failure to comply with the regulation can also have dramatic negative impacts on businesses. Fines range from 2% to 4% of the offending company’s worldwide annual revenue, and according to realtimecampaign.com, they’re not the only factor that business owners must consider. Non-compliant businesses also face significant damage to their reputations.
The Current State of GDPR Compliance
Since the adoption of the GDPR – Three Years In – hundreds of businesses have faced fines for non-compliance with the regulation. The two most common violations are insufficient technical or organizational measures taken to ensure compliance and processing data without a sufficient legal basis. However, the DPA has also attributed fines for non-compliance to seven other reasons, including:
Non-compliance with the general principles of the GDPR
Failure to fulfill data subjects’ rights
Failing to fulfill information obligations
Non-cooperation with supervising authorities
Insufficient data breach notifications
Failure to appoint a data protection officer
Failure to adopt a sufficient data processing agreement
On average, the highest fines were leveraged across four industries. The hospitality, transportation, employment, and media industries have been hardest hit by GDPR non-compliance fines. Offending companies within these industries have, as predicted, also faced reputational damage.
How to Ensure Compliance Moving Forward
The first step for any business owner to ensure compliance with the GDPR is to get more info on the law’s exact requirements. Next, business owners should identify personal data across all their data sources. It’s best to either hire a data protection officer or work with a specialist like Delphix to identify both subject data and appropriate methods for protection.
Methods for protecting personal data include encryption, pseudonymization, and anonymization. It’s important to apply the right technique based on usage context. Once a company has assigned a data protection officer, identified relevant personal data, and established a data processing and protection agreement, it can conduct an audit. The audit will show authorities that there are appropriate processes in place for data management and the company is in control of how all personal data is used, and for what purpose.
The Bottom Line
In today’s highly digital and globalized world, it’s important for all business owners to recognize the importance of data security. Those who collect or analyze data from EU citizens or organizations must be doubly careful, no matter their countries of origin if they want to avoid hefty fines and damage to their reputations. The best way to ensure GDPR compliance is to work with experts in the field who understand all the nuances of the complex regulations and how they can be applied to individual companies across various industries.
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