12 Steps Preparing your organization for the GDPR

This checklist created by ICO highlights 12 steps you or your company can take in order to get ready for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) coming into effect 25 May 2018.

The GDPR’s core principles are largely similar to what is seen in the present Data Protection Act (DPA). Therefore if you are already complying correctly with this then GDPR should not mean sweeping changes to your company policies. This being said, there are new concepts and meaningful progressions in GDPR, therefore, you will have to alter certain aspects and start afresh on others. The GDPR puts a greater onus upon documentation, keeping data controllers accountable and asking them to demonstrate this.

However, it is important that your organisation adheres to the principles of the General Data Protection Regulations and understands best practice for managing information. To help ensure you are complying with the GDPR, we are here to help you in the entire processes also we have training materials and consulting services.

The 12 steps outlined in the article are as follows:

1. Awareness: You should make sure that decision makers and key people in your organisation are aware that the law is changing to the GDPR. They need to appreciate the impact this is likely to have.
2. Information you hold: You should document what personal data you hold, where it came from and who you share it with. You may need to organize an information audit.
3. Communicating Privacy Information: You should review your current privacy notices and put a plan in place for making any necessary changes in time for GDPR implementation.
   
4. Individuals’ rights: You should check your procedures to ensure they cover all the rights individuals have, including how you would delete personal data or provide data electronically and in a commonly used format.
   
5. Subject Access Requests: You should update your procedures and plan how you will handle requests within the new timescales and provide any additional information.
   
6. The lawful basis for Processing Personal Data: You should identify the lawful basis for your processing activity in the GDPR, document it and update your privacy notice to explain it.
   
7. Consent: You should review how you seek, record and manage consent and whether you need to make any changes. Refresh existing consents now if they don’t meet the GDPR standard.
   
8. Children: You should start thinking now about whether you need to put systems in place to verify individuals’ ages and to obtain parental or guardian consent for any data processing activity.
   
9. Data Breaches: You should make sure you have the right procedures in place to detect, report and investigate a personal data breach.
   
10. Data Protection by Design and Data Protection Impact Assessments: You should familiarize yourself now with code of practice on Privacy Impact Assessments as well as the latest guidance from Working Party, and work out how and when to implement them in your organization.
    
11. Data Protection Officers: You should designate someone to take responsibility for data protection compliance and assess where this role will sit within your organisation’s structure and governance arrangements. You should consider whether you are required to formally designate a Data Protection Officer.
    
12. International: If your organisation operates in more than one EU member state (ie you carry out cross-border processing), you should determine your lead data protection supervisory authority. Article 29 Working Party guidelines will help you do this.
    

If you are unsure about you or your business needs to be in compliance of the GDPR, please send us a message and we will be glad to inform you. It’s free to ask and can save you a lot of trouble.

On the other hand, from the technical point of view, all this will help you to control and manage your digital assets.