Billions of people have had their personal information breached from companies online. The EU’s GDPR is a regulatory mean for Europe to make sure this does not keep happening.
While GDPR affects the way your business can communicate with customers and the way it can handle their personal data, in a study of more than 800 European businesses, the result was that more than 50% of businesses know little or nothing about GDPR. This scenario is a bit of a headache since GDPR impacts directly the way businesses handle personal data and the changes apply to both prospect and customer data.
So what is GDPR anyway?… GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation and was implemented in all local privacy laws across the European Union and the European Economic Area and applies to all companies selling to and storing personal information about European citizens and European companies. Citizens of the EU and EEA now have greater control over their personal data and assurances that their information is being securely protected across Europe.
According to the GDPR there shall be no distinction between personal data about any individual beingtheir public or private roles. GDPR gives EU citizens and residents eight guarantees that holds businesses responsible for:
The right to be informed how personal data is used
The right of access to personal data organizations are holding
The right to correct personal data that is inaccurate or incomplete
The right to request the deletion of personal data under certain circumstances
The right to restrict or pause the processing of data if there are irregularities
The right to have an organization send personal data it holds to other companies
The right to object to data processing
The right to protection from harmful automated decision-making processes
Adherence to GDPR makes perfect sense for any company doing business in Europe or within the European market and it helps in building trust while putting consumer data protection first. It obviously require an investment in the tools required for data gathering and storage, also a responsible Data Protection Officer but in the long-run it strengthens relationships with your customers and other businesses. Trust is a major factor for business.
In our next article we will tackle the applicability of GDPR and its daily impacts on you and your business.
