As businesses and organisations increasingly rely on technology to store, process, and share data, the need for data protection has become more apparent. In response, many organisations appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO) or Privacy Manager to ensure compliance with data protection regulations. In this blog post, we will discuss the role of a DPO and Privacy Manager in more detail.
A Data Protection Officer is a person appointed by an organisation to ensure compliance with data protection regulations. The primary responsibility of a DPO is to ensure that the organisation processes personal data by data protection regulations. This involves monitoring the organisation’s compliance with data protection regulations, providing guidance on data protection matters, and cooperating with data protection authorities. In addition, a DPO is responsible for raising awareness of data protection issues within the organisation and training employees.
Under GDPR, you need to appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO) if you are a public authority or body or if your core activities involve “regular and systematic monitoring of data subjects on a large scale” or “processing on a large scale of special categories of data or data relating to criminal convictions and offences”.
The regulations do not state what is classified as ‘large scale’, but the best practice is over 250 data subjects. The ICO has a self-assessment to see if you legally need to appoint a DPO, and it takes less than 5 minutes to complete.
The Role of a Privacy Manager
Many businesses don’t need a Data Protection Officer, but they still need or want someone to oversee it. That is where a Privacy Manager comes in.
A Privacy Manager is a person responsible for managing an organisation’s privacy program. The primary responsibility of a Privacy Manager is to ensure that the organisation’s privacy policies and procedures comply with data protection regulations. This involves conducting privacy assessments, developing and implementing privacy policies and procedures, and monitoring the organisation’s compliance with privacy regulations. In addition, a Privacy Manager is responsible for raising awareness of privacy issues within the organisation and training employees.
Having a Privacy Manager in a business is good practice because the primary responsibility of a Privacy Manager is to ensure that the organisation’s privacy policies and procedures comply with data protection regulations. This involves conducting privacy assessments, developing and implementing privacy policies and procedures, and monitoring the organisation’s compliance with privacy regulations. In addition, a Privacy Manager is responsible for raising awareness of privacy issues within the organisation and training employees. By having a Privacy Manager, organisations can better protect the personal data of their customers and employees.
Conclusion
Organisations need a Data Protection Officer or Privacy Manager when they process personal data, as mandated by data protection regulations. The primary responsibility of a DPO is to ensure that the organisation processes personal data by data protection regulations, while the primary responsibility of a Privacy Manager is to ensure that the organisation’s privacy policies and procedures comply with data protection regulations.
In conclusion, with the increasing importance of data protection, many organisations appoint Data Protection Officers or Privacy Managers to ensure compliance with data protection regulations. The primary responsibility of a DPO is to ensure that the organisation processes personal data by data protection regulations, while the primary responsibility of a Privacy Manager is to ensure that the organisation’s privacy policies and procedures comply with data protection regulations. By appointing these positions, organisations can better protect the personal data of their customers and employees.
Carrying out a Gap Analysis will help to determine whether your organisation has implemented data protection effectively. It will also allow us to show whether or not your organisation’s policies are being followed when data is processed.
Another name for a gap analysis is a data protection audit or health check.
Completing a gap analysis enables organisations to identify and control potential risks and avoid breaches. It also ensures that the organisation follows the UK GDPR and/or Data Protection Act 2018 (the Act). This can help organisations protect themselves against potential financial penalties and legal claims from those whose data has been breached. Non-compliance can also result in negative publicity, harming an organisation’s reputation. When an organisation complies with these requirements, it effectively identifies and controls risks. Therefore, it protects itself as much as possible in case of a data breach.
An audit will typically assess your organisation’s procedures, systems, records, and activities to:
Ensure the appropriate policies and procedures are in place
Verify that those policies and procedures are being followed
Test the adequacy controls in place
Detect breaches or potential breaches of compliance
Recommend any indicated changes in management, policy, and procedure.
Benefits of gap analysis
It’s an audit of data protection implementation in your organisation. For me, it is more of a health check with some great benefits for a business. A gap analysis can help your business:
Improving compliance: a gap analysis can help you to develop a plan to bring your business into compliance. This can help you to avoid costly fines and legal actions.
Reducing risk: A gap analysis can help you to identify where your business is vulnerable to data breaches or other security incidents. You can reduce the risk of a data breach and protect your business from the consequences of such an incident.
Enhancing security: A gap analysis can help you to identify areas where your security measures may be lacking. A plan can be created to improve your security posture and protect your business from cyber threats.
Building customer trust: With strong data protection measures and ensuring compliance with regulations, you can build trust with your customers. This can result in increased customer loyalty and positive word-of-mouth recommendations.
Avoiding reputational damage: A data breach can harm your business’s reputation. You can prevent the negative impact of a data breach on your brand image.
Streamlining processes: You to streamline your data protection processes by identifying areas where you may be duplicating efforts or using outdated technologies. By optimising your operations, you can save time and money while maintaining a high level of data protection.
Completing a gap analysis
Knowing how to go about it is essential if you’re convinced that a data protection gap analysis is the right step for your business. Here are a few steps you can take to ensure that your gap analysis is practical:
Could you define your scope? Decide which business areas you want to assess in your gap analysis. This could include policies, procedures, technologies, and practices related to data protection.
Identify your assets: Determine what types of sensitive data your business handles, where it’s stored, who has access to it, and how it’s processed.
Evaluate your current state: Assess your data protection measures and identify areas where you may be non-compliant with regulations or vulnerable to data breaches.
You can develop a plan: Based on your assessment, you can create a plan to address any gaps or vulnerabilities you’ve identified. This plan should prioritise the most critical issues and outline specific steps to improve your data protection measures.
Monitor and update: Regularly monitor and update your data protection measures to ensure they remain effective and compliant with regulations.
By following these steps, you’ll be well on your way to implementing a thorough and effective data protection gap analysis for your business. Remember, taking proactive steps to protect sensitive data is crucial in today’s digital landscape.
Summary
Overall, a data protection gap analysis is a proactive step that can help your business stay ahead of potential data breaches and ensure compliance with data protection regulations.
It also provides:
Recommendations on mitigating non-compliance risks.
Reducing the chance of damage and distress to individuals.
Minimising regulatory action against your organisation for a breach of the Act.
Overall, a data protection gap analysis is a proactive tool to help your business protect its sensitive data and comply with data protection regulations.
If you need help to get started on completing an analysis or would like to have a fresh set of one of our team complete it for you, please book a free discovery call here.
Following on from our recent look at the sheer range of applications for business within the Microsoft 365 environment, we will continue by looking at some of the household names. The apps that everyone will be familiar with, along with one or two of the fascinating supporting cast. The little-known ones you might not know as well but which can help your business perform at its best.
Office staple apps
Word and Excel combined to form the backbone of most people’s needs when it comes to Microsoft Office. They are familiar, comfortable and intuitive to use. However, they can still surprise us occasionally.
Many users don’t realise that Word can be a powerhouse tool for collaboration. The Co-Authoring feature allows users to work on documents stored in SharePoint or Onedrive with anyone, anywhere. Simply by clicking on the share icon and adding the email addresses of the people they want to work with, users can collaborate on documents in real time.
Without a doubt, Excel is the ‘go-to’ app for anyone working with spreadsheets.
The ‘smart lookup’ function is just one of Microsoft 365 features. Right-clicking on word and selecting the smart lookup function launches Bing. Bing then searchs the internet for information on whatever is highlighted.
Communication apps
Microsoft 365 has a range of inter-connecting communication apps; Teams, Outlook and Yammer to name the essentials.
Outlook has everything we need to do business. Most things can be done from your inbox simply by selecting the drop-down menu in the Outlook inbox. From there, contacts can be added, appointments scheduled, and emails assigned to specific days just by dragging them onto the calendar icon.
Yammer is, for many, the ideal way to add private, secure social media to their business. Users can connect, engage and share thoughts and ideas across their business. Therefore, staying informed and creating a sense of community and sharing resources or simply saying thanks.
Think of it as similar to your business’ own private Twitter network.
Discovery
Delve is accessed through a browser. It’s a cloud-based platform ideal for remote working across an array of devices and forms a valuable hub for users and colleagues. Invaluable for files, collaboration or even enterprise networking.
Delve can fill the user’s space with things they might find helpful. It also allows users to search and choose their content. Delve keeps those things private by default, only sharing the desired content and resources.
Tracking user data and overseeing efficiency and productivity are vital parts of a successful team. MyAnalytics gives a detailed overview of the time spent performing different tasks, hours worked, and things such as attending meetings or working late.
Reports and dashboards give essential insights into business processes, team configurations and business productivity with a powerful automation tool helping to place focus right where it’s needed.
Presentations
Teaching, making compelling proposals and pitching ideas are all possible with PowerPoint, with rich presentations that look great with little need for expertise or specialised knowledge. Users even have the potential to add audio to slides, such as voiceovers, effects or soundtracks.
Sway is a niche app for many, but it allows users to create content-rich, visually appealing designs for reports, web pages and newsletters. Content can be dragged in from various sources, and users can even add forms, slideshows or image stacks for viewers to click through like a retro photo pile.
Sharing video content safely and securely for learning, presenting, and meetings is easy with Stream. It has the potential to become an organisation’s very own video hub. At a time when so many rely on remote solutions, Stream is one of the most useful.
To discover how you could utilise Microsoft better in your business, why not book a slot for a free discussion with me here?
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Privacy management can be a contentious issue. Isn’t it the business’s data when I have it? The data is out there, so why can’t I use it? Why should businesses care about the management of data and privacy?
History
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, has one of the earliest statements towards the right to an individual’s privacy.
That was over 70 years ago, and the rights of an individual, in relation to privacy, are still being defined and redefined; 1973 and the first Data Act, in Sweden. The 1998 Data Protection Act in the UK and then, subsequently, the 2018 General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), led to countries around Europe updating their own data protection laws.
Businesses have adapted and changed in 70 years, especially with the advancement and speed in technology. Hence the changes and updates in legislation, especially in relation to information sharing.
Privacy conflict
Businesses need data to run their businesses. Ideally, many businesses would say, they need to gather information to contact prospective clients and use that data as they want within their business. Look at the big tech companies, like Meta, Google and Amazon, who rely on the collection and ‘reusing/distributing’ of data as a fundamental cornerstone of their business. The selling of data can be a considerable income stream.
It is no wonder that businesses, no matter how big or small, have difficulties with privacy; especially when you have to balance the needs of the business with the needs of the individual. The individual has rights!
And there is the conflict. Many businesses argue either the information is out there or that the person has given it to them, so why can’t I use it the way they want to?
Good data management is good for business. Having everything in place can mean that things run smoother, and ore importantly, it can help reduce costs (especially in relation to software).
Who’s data is it?
GDPR set out to clarify the importance of privacy and data security. More importantly, it determines who the owner of the data is. The individual owns the data, and not the business. Businesses are, in effect, custodians of the information held by a living person. As a result, they have to follow the principles of the regulations.
Lawfulness, Fairness and Transparency
Purpose limitation
Data minimisation
Accuracy
Storage limitation
Integrity and confidentiality
Accountability
In short, that means that businesses need to
Identify the legal reason for collecting and storing the information AND have a way of informing the individuals.
Ensure individuals’ rights are protected and acted upon.
Only use the information for the purpose it was collected. This means we can not collect information and then use it for whatever reason we want, regardless of it being in the public domain.
Only collect and store the bare minimum we need for the minimum amount of time we need to store it
Ensure that the information we keep is accurate and if not correct it
Ensure that the data is not lost or destroyed
Being able to show compliance with the legislation.
Managing privacy
Saying we are data protection compliant is not enough. Businesses need to prove it. Some key areas to look at are
Know your data
Map out what data you collect, save and keep; for what reason, and where it is.
Only use it for the purpose collected
One example of this is, networking contacts can not be added to your email marketing or send sales emails. They consented for you to have their details; they did not consent for you to add them to your email marketing
Keep it up-to-date and accurate
Account status, contact information, and payment history.
Assess, review, and update
Assess what documentation you have and need
Review for updates and changes in practice
Look at trends in data security
Secure it
Ensure that physical material is locked away securely
Ensure digital devices are secure and backed-up
Training
Train your staff on what is data protection, and IT security
Have policies and processes in place, so they know what to do
Keep records
log incidents and lessons learned
keep records of equipment, software
risk assessments and DPIAs
Sounds complicated?
It doesn’t need to be complicated. Help is at hand. As a data protection specialist, I am here to support and assist with your data protection woes. Why not get in touch?
Every industry has standards. Some are legal standards, set in stone and mandatory. There are also various regulatory compliance measures to ensure conformity. Regulations and legislation set a standard and ensure compliance. But being compliant is not only a regulatory obligation, but is showing that you are compliant is good for business.
Compliance is essential for business, but it can also serve as one of the best tools for promoting a brand, raising standards and driving productivity.
Compliance has many other, notable benefits:
Reducing the risk of costly legal issues
Creating a safer, more efficient workplace (with happier, more motivated teams who stay on board for the long term)
Winning customer trust in a way that few other things can
Compliance can be a powerful tool for public relations
The broad spectrum of compliance in business
If you are looking at compliance for your business, where on earth do you begin? Well, a lot can depend on your service and your industry. There are, however, several key areas applicable to us all.
Health and safety policies:
If your business has five or more employees, a written Health and Safety policy is mandatory. For less than five, however, it is still a good idea.
Data protection & GDPR:
If you are dealing with data, you have to commit to protecting it by the law; your policy should consider your company’s size, activities, and existing IT policies.
Other industry-specific compliance measures include Safeguarding, Cookies, Kite marks and certain pre-requisites if the organisation is looking to partner with Government agencies or the NHS.
Sought-after compliance
For those with the desire to really showcase their brand, its services or products, some standards take customer care and staff welfare to levels above those of the competition. They can demonstrate transparency, ethical practices, philosophy and good principles.
While they might not always be mandatory, we might be foolish to neglect them…
The International Standards Organisation offers a wide range of non-compulsory but highly sought after standards.
ISO 9001 is one such standard linked to Quality Management Systems. It is the yardstick for many businesses looking to demonstrate their products and services meet customer needs and fulfil legal and regulatory requirements.
ISO14001 represents another sought after standard in the business world of today. Focusing on environmental management, it serves as proof of compliance with applicable ecological and environmental regulations. In a world of increasingly aware consumers and potential partners, it can make all the difference.
How can a we support you?
Regardless of whether you are seeking to conform to mandatory legal/regulatory compliance or quality standards that can be either mandatory or highly recommended, then we may be able to help.
Compliance is a specialised field, and many companies can find it challenging to collate the information they need and present it in the correct standardised format. A specialist Virtual Assistant can:
Identify what materials you need for submission and often pinpoint the ones which fulfil multiple criteria
Deliver the help and support you need to collate it
Offer help and advice around the submission process
Support to create your policies and procedures
Ensure your submissions are professional, relevant and on-brand
Help you to create internal audits and self-assessments
Highlight key areas for external audits by independent regulatory bodies
Good compliance is good for business. If you’d like help and support ensuring your business ticks all the boxes and stands proudly above the completion, get in touch today.
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