Make GDPR your friend, not your foe

It’s difficult to remember now the panic that GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) evoked ahead of its implementation in 2018. Whilst responsible businesses had always protected sensitive data, GDPR brought a sea-change in how personal data should be used, stored and made available with the threat of heavy fines and embarrassing publicity for any business or organisation who flouted – whether intentionally or not – the regulations.

In reality, GDPR compliance is not so difficult to achieve provided you and your staff have a clear understanding of the way information flows into, through and out of your business. Examining this journey and understanding the risks along the various touch points will allow you to put the correct procedures into place to protect your data and minimise the possibility of anything going astray.

On top of establishing robust processes and procedures, another key element in achieving compliance is to ensure that all your staff are appropriately trained. It only takes one error for a breach to occur and there is no way of putting the genie back in the bottle once that happens!

At ISO QA, we can help businesses with our GDPR Compliance Assessment. As well as outlining your obligations under the legislation, we can audit and help you to set up the relevant systems and procedures for compliance across data subject rights, data mapping and procedural documentation, the appointment of Data Protection Officers, reporting breaches and impact assessments.

It pays to be pro-active in this area – apart from the damage caused by a breach, GDPR compliance also feeds in to other ISO Standards such as ISO 27001 on Information Security so getting the basics right on GDPR can help with accreditation in other standards.

At the end of the day, we all want our information protected – compliance with GDPR is a great way to demonstrate you take this seriously and should be a guiding principle in any organisation.

Find out more how ISO QA can help with GDPR Compliance or other standards by getting in touch today.