GDPR has been a hot topic since Britain voted to leave the European Union and with the deadline only being a few months away, everyone needs to be prepared. The new General Data Protection Regulation ‘GDPR’ was created by the European Union to strengthen the protection of personally identifiable information of individuals. GDPR will begin 25th May 2018 and despite Britain voting to leave the European Union, GDPR will still apply to businesses in the UK.
The current Data Protection Act was becoming increasingly out of date and in need of an overhaul, especially with companies becoming too relaxed around the topic of data protection and how to handle a data breach, just look at Equifax, Talk Talk and Yahoo for example. If a business does not comply with GDPR, the penalties are costly with fines up to €2million or 4% of a business’s annual turnover if data has been breached or €1million or 2% of your annual turnover for poor data organisation.
So, with all this in mind, how will GDPR impact B2B marketers and marketing companies? According to a recent survey conducted by ICO: Marketers are not feeling confident about GDPR with only 55% of companies feeling on course with their preparations to meet the May 2018 deadline.So what are some points marketers and marketing companies need to consider in preparation for the approaching deadline?
- Firstly, everyone needs to be aware GDPR, anyone who is working on a B2B campaign or even handling the data must be aware so that they work to the new set of data protection standards that GDPR will set in place.
- Consent must always be given regarding the use of data, but this has always been the case, along with good organisation and storage of personal data, data profiling and having a compliant system to manage data.
- Data audits should be conducted regularly. What data do you hold? Where was it obtained? Where is it stored? What systems and programmes are in place to store and organise data?
- Audit and compliance regarding GDPR allow your business to avoid organisational fines also. What organisational methods are in place to keep data clean, safe and up to date?
- What procedures are in place in the event of a data breach? How will your business handle a data breach? You also need be ready to report them to the correct authorities within 72 hours.
- The person behind the data has every right for their data to be removed. GDPR now allows them to request how you obtained their data, how it is being used, where has it been used, and they can ask for their information to be removed.
Data is everything to us at Fresh Flow as it allows us to do our jobs and provide the best services to our clients. We always want to provide our clients with good quality and meaningful results which has come from good quality and reliable data. We always obtain data with consent and never abuse the information, if someone wishes to be no longer contacted, we remove their information. We also have the procedures and systems in place to protect and safely organise any personally identifiable information.
If you are interested in more information regarding GDPR and marketing, ICO has fantastic information available on their website here.