Here’s Why Being GDPR-compliant is Important For Your Business

Starting a business is tough, but maintaining it is another difficulty level. As such, ensuring that your business is compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR is extremely important.

But first of all, what is GDPR, and why should your business comply with it?

In a nutshell, it’s a regulation that both EU and EEA regions implement across all local privacy laws. This rule applies to all businesses that sell and store citizens’ personal data within Europe, and it also covers companies located outside the two regions. As a result, citizens have better control over their private information, therefore assuring them that their data is kept protected and safe across Europe.

GDPR covers 8 fundamental rights that all individuals freely enjoy:

1. The right to access
2. The right to be forgotten
3. The right to data portability
4. The right to be informed
5. The right to have information corrected
6. The right to restrict processing
7. The right to object
8. The right to be notified

These rights aim to protect the safety and security of all individuals across the EU and EEA. It mainly targets data controllers and businesses while regulating citizens’ privacy. To sum it up, it’s a threshold that protects data users and subjects by upholding their rights.

Why Being GDPR-Compliant Is Important For Your Business

Indeed, data is one of the most influential currencies globally because it can determine an individual’s future. And even though GDPR poses some challenges for businesses, it also paves the way for brand new opportunities.

Better Business Imaging

When it comes to running your business, it’s highly crucial to ensure an excellent reputation. And by being GDPR-Compliant, you can show your customers that your company takes their data seriously and responsibly. This legislation provides that all organizations employ a Data Protection Officer together while practicing consistent data-processing audits. Moreover, your organization must comply with the required framework to ensure that the data subject’s PIN (personally identifiable information) remains in place.

It’s not surprising that whenever a company’s data is breached, its overall brand equity is negatively affected. However, GDPR’s suggested security measures will boost your business’ reputation, ultimately proving to your customers that your organization has a solid data governance system.

Improved Decision-Making

GDPR compliance encompasses various aspects, but it mainly improves a company’s ability to make decisions in terms of an individual’s private information. After all, all automated decisions are susceptible to error. Moreover, the GDPR legislation requires the right to obtain human intervention, which ultimately minimizes room for unqualified decisions.

Luckily, GDPR allows your organization to develop a more consolidated set of data, making it easier and more efficient to use. It also leads to a better understanding and grasp of the data’s value. By utilizing customer data grace and efficiency, your organization’s decision-making process will enhance your ROI or return on investment.

Reinforced Data Security

As you know, cyber security attacks loom as one of the most significant threats to enterprises across the globe. And with the sophistication that these attacks execute every passing day, investing in GDPR-compliant business websites and databases would be a smart move to boost your data security.

Upon compliance with GDPR, your business will be required to use smart identity access management to limit only several professionals accessing your company’s essential data. As a result, you and your customers are assured that hackers won’t access their data. Moreover, your business is obliged to disclose any data breach under the GDPR within 3 days of its occurrence.

Fewer Maintenance Costs

By complying with the GDPR, your business won’t need to provide as many maintenance costs as before because you can retire irrelevant legacy applications and data inventory software from your company.

And did you know that by following GDPR’s rule to keep your data inventory updated, your business can significantly decrease your maintenance budget? All you have to do is consolidate information found in silos or stored deep in inconsistent formats. In addition, you will also have little to no data maintenance costs.

Moreover, having personalized communication with interested customers will allow you to reduce your budget in terms of wooing uninterested individuals. It will be a win-win situation for you and your customers because it makes way for a deeper connection with your audience.

Stay Up-To-Date With Technology’s Advancement

One of the best perks of being GDPR-compliant is that it paves the way for your business to keep up with evolving technology. It will continuously challenge your company to reinforce its endpoint, application security, database, and network. This leads to the constant hunger for improvements such as investing in cloud computing, virtualization, and The Internet of Things (IoT). It hits two birds with one stone; better management of growing data demand and the chance to promote end users augmented services and products.

By utilizing various third-party tools and services, your company can consistently check and monitor for any possible data breaches, allowing you to get on top of it right away. These can help you monitor your log data while keeping tabs on several data transferred outside your control. Plus, they allow for easy check-ins regarding file and folder integrity to prevent sneaky viruses from attacking the system.

A Business’ Guide For GDPR-Compliance

1. Strategically map every single data within your business
2. Segregate data into two: what you need and what you don’t need
3. Invest in security measures to prevent unsolicited data entry
4. Review and familiarize your business with all documentation available
5. Formulate a foolproof step-by-step guide on how to handle personal information

The Takeaway

As your business embraces GDPR, you must realize that the legislation is not only a regulatory obligation that has to be followed just because; it is a way to holistically achieve alignment between business, technology, and consumer safety. And as you already know, data is slowly transforming into the fuel for the digital economy of this generation.

To have a secured future, companies, both small and large, need to formulate a comprehensive and efficient approach to align their values and information with the data management policies required today. For more information about GDPR compliance, you can always browse our website. Invest in your business and customers today by complying with GDPR.