Say goodbye to major security and privacy threats as stricter policies on data collection take effect. To ensure security for the data you collate, GDPR has introduced a set of must-follow stringent guidelines. And if you don’t follow them, you can count on receiving a huge fine.
For instance, did you know that the UK’s information commissioner’s office (ICO) received the second-highest total value of the fine for data protection violation? As a result, businesses have to pay more than €43,901,000 for breaching. At the same time, Italy’s data watchdog accrued an incredible fine of €58,161,601 (approximately £52.6 million) as a financial penalty.
These are two of the many companies that suffered huge fines. It is mainly because companies fail to keep up with the latest data privacy and data collection guidelines. Here, we take a closer look at GDPR’s new data collection guidelines:
How Remote Working is Restructuring the Data Privacy World
To prevent the spread of the coronavirus, remote working has become the new norm. This has hindered operations in various industries.
In the same way, remote working has had a substantial impact on privacy and security methods. For this reason, companies must learn to secure and safeguard their data whenever they utilize public storage and networks.
Present-day businesses have to provide GDPR with a proper reason regarding their data collection policies. Moreover, employees boast the power to control how much data can be collected and whether they want to share any data or not.
If businesses and firms violate customers’ and employees’ right to data sharing, GDPR may charge a considerable fine for collating data without legitimate reasons and permission. British Airways and Marriott are two prime examples of leading businesses that received nearly £20 million fines due to data breaches.
Customer’s Sensitive Data is at Risk
As a direct result of work-from-home models, employees access data from personal devices. These devices may be susceptible to malicious viruses, have security loopholes, or lack adequate firewalls to protect confidential data relevant to their customers.
It often leads to loss, theft, or compromises in customer’s data. For safeguarding this volatile information, businesses must figure out better and more efficient ways of protecting their customer’s data when customers are using personal devices to access the company database.
Ways to Protect Your Data
Data encryption encodes your customer’s data in a way that can be accessed when users enter the correct encryption key.
The encrypted data appears in unreadable text to the person accessing your data without permission. Business owners should encrypt sensitive data to prevent cybersecurity breaches.
The GDPR Recital 83 and Article 32 mention ‘encryption’ as the basic feature for adequate technical and organizational security measures. With the help of encryption, your data will be illegible and, ultimately, safe from all malicious breaches.
Tips to Keep Your Company GDPR Compliant while Following a Remote Work Model
Here’s how you can incorporate GDPR guidelines in your work system when adopting a work-from-home model:
- Update your cybersecurity policy to enhance the security within your business. Identify and detect security loopholes and learn to respond to them effectively.
- Safeguard data storage and sharing via encryption and controlled access.
- Encrypting your data is requisitory, as stated by GDPR in article 32. Controlled access, secured connections, and ensuring no exceptions are the only ways to secure confidential data.
Consult with an Advisor
All in all, businesses should integrate system designs and security protocols in their day-to-day tasks. This way, they can protect customer’s confidential data regardless of whether they’re working from home or in-office.
If a business tries to justify a security breach by saying that employees work remotely on personal devices, they may end up with heavy penalties and fines. Avoid facing these legal repercussions and violating the GDPR by learning the ins and outs of GDPR.
Complying with the GDPR is a great way to ensure you don’t have to face such severe consequences. However, the legal repercussions of a breach are often too complicated to understand.
Consider talking to a GDPR expert like Omreon and educating your employees on how to protect sensitive data. At the same time, increase their awareness about the ramifications of failing to do so. Venture onto their website to get access to get excellent solutions and revolutionary products based on GDPR!