GDPR - What you need to do

Is GDPR slowly creeping up on you and you don’t know where to start? Read on.

The Information Commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, has told businesses there’s no time to delay in preparing for “the biggest change to data protection law for a generation” (see here). Certainly the journey to GDPR compliance has started for most in our industry.

There are quite a few toolkits out there which spell out 12 steps, or 10 steps (see our previous article on the subject) to GDPR compliance. Generally, however, firms are looking to:

1. Understand the new rules. Understanding is clearly the first step required and many have been reading the range of ICO consultation documents available. Alternatively you may attend our seminar (details at the bottom) to expedite your learning.

2. Get GDPR high on the priority list of the Directors in order to obtain the resource you need to implement the standards. This resource may include external consultants to conduct the audit of current practices (below), new systems and time of colleagues to implement the standards as part of the cross departmental working party.

3. Audit current practices producing a gap-analysis against the new standards. Of course firms understand they will “fail” the audit but the purpose is to understand the changes required to meet GDPR

4. Produce a cross departmental working party to work through the findings of the gap-analysis

5. Conduct a post-implementation audit in Q1 2018 allowing you time to correct any non-compliant findings.

At this stage most firms have achieved steps 1-3 and are underway forming their working party, if you are behind it is certainly time to get going!

We have a seminar this Friday in Manchester where we will cover all of the known elements of GDPR detailing the eight rights, the notion of privacy by design, data protection impact assessments and data retention. We’ll also show you in more detail the steps others are taking to achieve compliance!

To join the seminar simply email me with the delegate’s name, company name and company address.

Seminar details:

30 June 2017 – 9am until 3pm

INNSIDE Manchester, 1 First Street, Manchester, M15 4RP