10 Ways to Maintain GDPR Compliance on Your Business Website. #GDPR

GDPR can prove to be a minefield for unprepared businesses, so keep reading if you’re looking for some simple tips to remain GDPR compliant on your website…

Utter the letters GDPR (in the order, of course) and some business owners will instinctively shudder. In May 2018, data protection reforms were enforced, which meant that the General Data Protection Regulation was brought into effect, helping to protect the personal information of people whilst online.

The GDPR is widely considered to be the world’s strongest set of data protection rules, which places limitations on what organisations can do with the personal data they collect. Such data could include something as obvious as an individual’s name, or something more sensitive like their racial or ethnic origin.

In short, regulatory compliance is non-negotiable; failing to comply with GDPR simply isn’t an option for any business, no matter how big or small. Any breach, intentional or not, can result in a heavy fine, so how can businesses ensure to comply on their websites? Read on to find out…

10 Tips for Maintaining GDPR on Your Business Website?

1.) Understand the Law in Detail

First thing’s first, you’re going to need a comprehensive understanding of the law surrounding GDPR and what it can mean for your business. The best way of doing that is by hearing it straight from the horse’s mouth.

The government have published an extensive guide on GDPR, explaining every single legislation, with no stone left unturned. There’s no promising that it’s going to be a particularly compelling read. That said, it’s important that you review it and make sure you understand how it will apply to your businesses’ website.

2.) Staff Training and Awareness

The people that will be responsible for maintaining GDPR compliance will be your employees. So, it’s a good idea to make sure that they are well trained and aware of their obligations when it comes to handling personal data.

Training doesn’t have to be as intense as reading the entire guide to GDPR word for word. However, you should make sure to stress to your employees the importance of making safety and privacy their top priorities.

3.) Conduct Regular Risk Assessments

Granted, risk assessments aren’t exactly thrilling, but nor is being hit with an avoidable fine. An effective risk assessment will help your business to identify if there are any potential threats to the way you’re storing and transferring data.

From here, you’ll have a clearer idea as to how you can beef up your security processes, ensuring that you remain within the parameters of GDPR.

4.) Audit Any Personal Data You Hold

The personal data that your website stores – where did it come from, where’s it going, how long will you hold it for? These are the sorts of questions you should be asking to ensure that you’re able to keep it secure.

Finding and recording answers to all of these questions can be made that much easier by carrying out an audit. From here, you can reduce the number of physical places that data is being stored in. This should help to establish a sustainable framework for keeping customers and clients’ information secure.

5.) Have a Policy Management System in Place

Staying on top of GDPR compliance isn’t always a simple task, especially when your business is using methods of communication such as email and corporate internet. So, to help counteract this potential stumbling block, your business should consider implementing policy management software.

This can help to streamline internal processes, as you’ll have a centralised solution for creating and distributing sensitive documents. This will make it much easier to keep track of compliance.

6.) Establish Procedures to Report Data Breaches

The GDPR requires that all organisations which experience data breaches that compromise personal data should notify the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Failure to alert the ICO will lead to further fines – far from ideal.

So, to avoid this from happening, your business will need to have robust procedures in place that can quickly detect, report and investigate breaches.

7.) Ensure all Endpoints are Fully Protected

To achieve full GDPR compliance, all of your endpoints should be fully protected. For those not already in the know, this is the practice of securing any potential entry points in user devices, such as laptops, from malicious attacks.

To demonstrate compliance, businesses are required to show that they have taken all the necessary steps to secure their systems. This includes evidence of updates, and patches being applied to security software.

8.) Update Your Privacy Policy

If your business collects personal data on its website, then you’ll need to make sure that you have an updated privacy policy that covers some essential ground. Privacy policies that are GDPR compliant cover a few essential pieces of information, such as:

Your identity
How information will be used
Your legal basis for processing data
Your data retention records

9.) Review How You Record Consent

If you rely on getting individual’s consent to process personal data, there are specific standards that must be met.

This means that your business may feel it necessary to review the systems you have in place for recording consent, ensuring that you have an audit trail that can be presented if required.

10.) Appoint a Data Protection Officer

Organisations that employee more than 250 people, are a public authority, or are involved in the regular and systematic monitoring of data subjects on a large scale, should appoint a data protection officer.

Data protection officers can take proper responsibility for data protection compliance, as well as having the in-depth knowledge to do their job effectively.