Joanna Taylor, director of digital innovation at Software AG gives us some Valentine’s Day tips on how to maintain a happy relationship with your data when it comes to GDPR compliance.
GDPR: Fall back in love with your data
Tomorrow marks the final countdown for businesses to get serious about their data compliance. As we enter the final 100 days before the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is enforced, there is still much to be done.
So, we’d like to offer a little ‘dating guide’ with some advice and best practice tips, encouraging organisations to fall in Love all over again with their data – and not ‘break up’ over new regulations.
Here are some Valentine’s Day tips:
Create a steady foundation
Looking forward to GDPR and beyond, businesses need to build a strong foundation that will help them get through these changes and new regulations. In the same way that relationships grow and change, so do businesses’ needs. Supporting this evolution are new processes, data and systems that can be brought into play.
Trust and communication
Just like any relationship, the key elements to ensuring ongoing compliance and best practice are trust and communication. Businesses have rapidly increasing amounts of data, and it can seem an impossible task to keep track of it all.
It is therefore important that companies offer their employees training around best practice so that they trust that their data is being stored and used in line with the new regulations. This helps data protection become ‘by design’ engrained in projects from the start and offers more transparency. By bringing together people, processes and tools, a collaborative approach across the wider business – with key stakeholders involved – will help new processes stick faster.
Commitment – Not just a fling
Like love and marriage, GDPR requires businesses to make long term commitments. From hiring a data protection officer, to encouraging employees to conduct business in a safe way, getting compliant is a company-wide issue. To rise to the challenge and be committed, companies must prove they can manage data ethically and sensitively. This shouldn’t be seen as a box-ticking exercise to keep in line with the law, but a choice to conduct good business practice.
If you follow our GDPR relationship rules, you might find yourself falling in love with your data all over again. GDPR and data – like love and marriage – should be harmonious and mutually beneficial.
The post Software AG: Give your data some love this Valentine’s Day appeared first on Data Centre News (DCN).
