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3 Steps To Become Complete GDPR Compliant

Posted by Sas Chatterjee on Sep, 17, 2021 06:09

3 Steps To Become Complete GDPR Compliant

The General Data Protection Regulation or the commonly known as GDPR was introduced in the year 2016 and has started to change the business world and the way the business’s used to work. The GDPR was adopted in 2016 as it was based on the new requirements which were started in a step by step manner of how to process the personal data of EU subjects which eventually forced several business organizations to reconsider their existing policies, start adopting new and better procedures and eventually change their way of day to day operation.

Some important details prescribed keeping in mind the new requirements are:-

  • The GDPR applies not only to the business organizations operating within EU but also applies to the business organizations that provide service to or hire EU citizens, hence GDPR for US companies becomes essential who had their customer based in EU.
  • GDPR helps in the introduction of new requirements for the compliant consent.
  • The GDPR provides more rights to the data subjects which allows them to have greater control over their personal data.

A major reason why the GDPR legislation acquired so much attention is the fines collected by the legislation for the violation of GDPR. The fines collected are very substantial and vary accordingly depending on the severity of the infringement which starts from 10 million Euros and can reach up to 20 million Euros per incident. The exact fine depends on a number of factors like cooperation, nature of the issue, mitigation, etc. but these sums seem serious to take all the measures for becoming compliant. Organizations have started taking GDPR Consulting for avoiding any fines.

In order to make yourself GDPR compliant in 2021, one should follow the steps given below:-

Conducting the Audit

The first and the basic step before starting any new changes in the organization is defining the position where the organization stands at the moment. For doing so, a preliminary GDPR audit is required to be conducted which would help to assess all the activities, systems, records, processes, and data protection practices of the organization. The proper audit will help an organization by providing the full picture of the compliance which would help in the proper execution of the GDPR policies, critical flaws in the data structure, customization of software, evaluation of safety in the systems of the organizations, detecting data breaches and finally providing some basic recommendations on the required changes for the organization.

GDPR Segments

Defining the Project Scope

After a well-defined audit of the organization is done and all the problematic areas are found, a list needs to be created keeping in mind all the actions to be undertaken and the changes that are to be implemented. This would help to break down the GDPR project into smaller doable chunks which would prioritize the problematic areas depending upon the most severe ones. This would also divide the scope between several teams so that several streams such as charging infrastructure, business development processes, and the negotiations with several software vendors going on with parallel changes taking place in the customer support procedures.

Personal Related Activities

Personal-related activities can be divided into several segments.

Training:

One of the most important streams during the project is personal training. One would need to foster the culture of privacy and security awareness and should pay much more attention to the less tech-savvy employees. When an organization is not sure from where to start, it should look forward to making the employees aware of the cyber security policies already in use. The employees should be well trained as cyber attackers and hackers use human weaknesses for accessing personal data of an organization but when the data is related to the GDPR laws, the data leakage may be disastrous.

Development of New Policies:

With the adoption of new tools and changing the ways of processing the personal data of the individuals, the previously established workflow methods would need to undergo some major changes as well. The new processes would need to keep personal data deletion workflow and management of data inventories as a part of daily routine work. If an organization has a customer support team that handles the customers through chat or call services, they would need to be ready with the new procedures and policies in use in order to answer the customers with reference to the new techniques in use.

GDPR For US companies

Two-Way Communication:

Two-way communication about the latest rules is the key to success. An organization would need to properly communicate the new plans and policies which are deemed to be used with every individual of the organization. The more transparent the communication, the faster is the adaption. Having frequent question-answer sessions with the team members would increase concerns and help them get knowledge about the latest GDPR compliances.

Internal Checks:

Internal checks are conducted in order to confirm that the organization is ready to perform any GDPR related requests anytime. It would also determine whether the employees are properly following all the procedures or not. It includes stimulating or using case scenarios as if they are coming from real data subjects in order to analyze how the employee reacts to such cases coming to him. Other internal checks are used as an opportunity to assess the level of preparation and point out some failures. These failures would point out the areas where additional training is required for the employees.

Conclusion

GDPR process is a very complicated and ongoing process. It becomes important to remember that every company has a different starting point and a different set of needs when it comes to GDPR compliance. Every journey may look different and is acceptable until the end result turns out to be the same. Along with the GDPR laws being in action, the software vendors in order to be on the safe side have started giving out digital compliant personal data protection as a free service. Implementing these GDPR solutions would easily reduce the efforts of a business organization in day-to-day working.

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Sas Chatterjee
About the Author

Sas Chatterjee

Sas Chatterjee is a Senior Architect with EPC Group. His focus lies in making sure that the execution of each engagement is delivered in a forward compatible, best practices manner. Sas is an extremely devoted professional and takes each project he is assigned very seriously. During the project execution phase, Sas invests the time needed with his clients to gain a full understanding of their requirements and develops a roadmap for achieving their desired end goal.

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