The easy way is to have someone else do it. Call us. But if you’ve been saddled with your organization’s data protection obligations, read on.

Understanding the Gravity of GDPR

When the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect, there was a fundamental shift in how we regard personal information.

Data isn't just a commodity; it's an extension of people's lives, thoughts, and identities. Mishandling this data isn't a trivial error; it's a breach of trust that can have very real consequences.

GDPR embodies a spirit of respect for individual privacy and autonomy. It's about giving control back to the people whose data is collected and processed. Compliance isn't just a legal obligation; it's an ethical commitment to treat individuals with dignity.

The penalties for non-compliance are intentionally severe, impacting businesses of all sizes, small to large. Fines can reach up to €20 million or 4% of annual global turnover—whichever is higher.

And these aren't just theoretical numbers; small businesses have felt the sting of substantial fines for violations.

It Applies Even If You’re Not in the EU But Have European Customers

Many companies outside the EU breathed a sigh of relief when GDPR was announced, thinking it didn't apply to them. This is a dangerous misconception. GDPR's reach is extraterritorial. You're on the hook if you offer goods or services to EU residents or monitor their behavior. Like death and taxes —you can't opt out because you don't like it.

Moreover, you can think of GDPR as a super set of various regulations like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). By aiming for GDPR compliance, you're not just meeting EU standards; you're positioning yourself ahead of the curve globally for the inevitable data privacy laws in other locales.

GDPR Legislation

Read the GDPR Text

Most people avoid reading legal documents for the same reason they avoid root canals—it's painful. But if you're serious about compliance, simply tackle all 99 articles and 173 recitals yourself.

Legal jargon seems deliberately convoluted, perhaps to keep lawyers employed. But this challenge is also an opportunity. By immersing yourself, you gain a nuanced understanding that no summary can provide.

There's some risk here. Without legal counsel, you might misinterpret critical points. But there's also value in grappling with the material personally. Practical immersion is the best way to learn quickly and accurately—think Duolingo vs. moving to Japan. Fortunately, there are community-oriented resources you can reference, such as GDPRhub.

Build a Compliance Framework

Use Templates and Standard Guidelines

The internet is awash with GDPR templates promising quick compliance. One-size-fits-all solutions rarely fit anyone perfectly, but in this case, there are good templates, to begin with, and you can also use other major companies' policies as a guide. Your business has its own data, processes, and risks, so don’t stop there.

Develop More Policies and Procedures

Ensuring all business processes align with GDPR principles becomes a holistic exercise. You're not just overlaying new rules onto old habits; you're reevaluating how data flows through your organization.

As products and services change, leadership and management should understand the implications of data privacy, and data privacy and technology experts should have a seat at the table.

Data Mapping and Third Parties

Identify All Data Processing Activities

Conducting thorough audits and engaging the right people and departments in a data discovery process. You’ll need to map broad data flows and processing purposes along with personal data elements. There’s a side benefit of these conversations as people become more aware of how their actions impact data security and privacy.

Create Physical Data Flow Diagrams

Visualize data movements —whiteboards, sticky notes, and hand-drawn diagrams to enhance your understanding.

The challenge is maintaining accuracy over time. As processes change, your diagrams can become outdated. But updating them keeps you connected to the data lifecycle.

Identify and Minimize Data Risks

With these data processing activities in mind, conduct a data protection impact assessment (DPIA) to identify potential risks in how your organization collects, processes, and stores personal data.

These assessments help you pinpoint vulnerabilities and implement measures to mitigate them, such as encryption, access controls, and data minimization techniques. Regularly updating your DPIAs keeps your data protection practices current and effective, reducing the risk of breaches and ensuring compliance with GDPR requirements.

Data Subject Rights Management

Create a Request Handling System

GDPR grants individuals rights over their data, and you need to be able to manage these requests. These can be ad-hoc at first, and at scale, you’ll need to automate them. You’ll need to field access requests, deletion requests, stop processing requests, requests to correct data, and more.

Train staff to handle requests as if they were their own data. Responses must be made within 30 days.

Develop Consent Mechanisms

Consent Forms

Ensuring compliance with GDPR consent requirements means paying attention to details: clear language, unbundled consent, and easy withdrawal mechanisms.

Do you have a contact form on your website? You need to be clear about the information collected and how it’s used and give people the option to decline providing it.

Is data in your app provided to a third party? Users should know this.

Implement Security Measures

Protect Your Computers, Applications, Business Applications

Security isn't something you can outsource entirely. By telling your IT providers your expectations, you're setting the tone, but you need to be involved.

Properly securing infrastructure, apps, computers, and websites is an ongoing effort. It's about adopting best practices and staying informed about emerging threats.

Specifically, you need to protect data through encryption and access controls, apply configurations to your accounts and computers, and apply other controls that arise during your data protection impact assessment.

This is often where people get into trouble, and third parties or internal security teams should review technology configurations and assess application security for control weaknesses.

Monitoring and Breach Detection

Assigning staff to continuous surveillance is resource-intensive, but it puts humans in the loop. At the very least your staff needs to know what to do if they see a security alert. If you using advanced antivirus you may need a managed security services provider.

Reacting to incidents promptly minimizes damage. When everyone knows their role in a breach scenario, responses are swift and effective.

Training and Awareness

Create Training Programs

Designing workshops and seminars from scratch allows you to address your specific needs. Off-the-shelf programs might not cover the nuances of your operations. Interactive and tailored training typically has the most benefits but short, regular security and policy awareness training is necessary and useful. Document the effort and training schedule.

Documentation and Record-Keeping

Maintain Compliance Records

Keep records of your technical controls and processes. Initially, you might have a folder with various documents outlining your policies, procedures, impact assessments, and templates. You’ll probably find good value in online compliance management solutions as things become more complex. These platforms aren’t cheap but ultimately save you time and make future audits cheaper.

Engage with Supervisory Authorities

Handling Investigations

Direct communication with data protection authorities can be intimidating, and it may be helpful to have your attorney present. You’ll stay confident when you know your obligations and do your due diligence to understand your data flows, support and respond to the rights of your data subjects, and protect their data.

Future Considerations

The challenges are significant—time-consuming, resource-intensive, and often frustrating.

Through these efforts, you gain invaluable insights into your business. You don't just comply with regulations; you improve how you operate and take steps to protect people’s data.

Fortunately, there are resources who have been down this road and have experience actually protecting this data beyond the compliance aspects. As they say, it’s a journey, but it is doable. Best of luck!

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