GDPR: How to Protect Your Company From Infringement

We’re living through a digital revolution that’s powered primarily through data.

12:45 12 December 2018

The insights that companies can draw and the profits they can lift, from their data is powering business’ growth. Your own company, however small, will have its share of data - on internet traffic, consumer details, and sales data - that you draw value from. But with the introduction of the EU’s GDPR regulations, there are penalties for mishandling or losing the data of your customers. The following points walk you and your company through the elements that will contribute towards your ability to comply with these new, enforced regulations.

Be covered by insurance

GDPR is still something that companies large and small are getting used to. Indeed, for those larger companies with larger stores of data, it presents significantly more hoops to jump through than for smaller companies with smaller, more centralised data sets. Whatever company you’re involved in, you should ask yourself: how much does professional indemnity insurance cost? Looking to trusted companies and providers for insurance such as Hiscox, for example, will ensure that you’re covered for any data breaches or losses you might experience and the resultant action taken by regulators.

As with all aspects of business, it’s important to insure yourself. It means you’ll be able to protect against slip-ups and legal cases that can significantly damage your company’s finances and reputation. With the advent of GDPR, it’s especially important to have some cover that will protect you against unforeseeable data blunders. The next point deals with minimising the threat of non-compliance, but you should accept that you can never reduce the risk to zero per cent.

Read up on compliance

Compliance with GDPR takes time and technical know-how to achieve. Depending on the size of your company and the skills within it, you may need to outsource to a legal expert in order to fully comprehend the limitations put on the data you own. Else, you can perform research on the internet, where many resources display the key points for your company to observe.

GDPR was put together by EU regulators to protect ordinary citizens from the exploitation of their data. It’s been applauded as a remarkably well-formed regulation that can be easily complied with given proportionate investment in data protection. However, you’ll discover that significant fines can and will hit your company if you happen to neglect GDPR’s demands.

Exert maximal control over your data

Insurance and education aside, you’re still going to need to put in the legwork to get your data cleaned up and protected. This can only be achieved by IT specialists and data scientists, so you may have to look to outsourced help to get you in shape for compliance. If you have an in-house team you can trust, get them working on your data immediately. Ensure there are no areas in your computer systems that malevolent actors can exploit. Make sure to save your data on private servers, and to be able to extract or delete data at a consumer’s request.

By working on this final point of advice, you’ll be doing everything in your power to comply with GDPR, and to protect against the fines that result from infringement.