GDPR Compliance Checklist: Steps and Tools To Conquer Data Privacy

By admin Post September 24, 2024 0 Comments

We’ve all heard about the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

It’s a data privacy thing, right? In essence, yes.

But, for businesses, it signifies a fundamental shift in how they interact with and stay in touch with their customers and target audience.

For instance, Meta was issued with a hefty fine of 1.3 billion dollars for not adhering to the data privacy parameters defined by GDPR. 😲

So, if you have customers in the EU region, you need to get this thing right and you need to do so asap!

This blog post will equip you with a clear understanding of GDPR compliance, a handy checklist to achieve it, and some helpful tools to automate and streamline the process.

Here we go. 🎢

The GDPR is a regulation enforced by the EU to safeguard the data privacy of individuals within the region. It dictates how the personal data of EU citizens are collected, stored, used, and ultimately protected by businesses.

The law was implemented in May 2018 and has significantly impacted how companies interact with customers. This exhaustive guideline was put in place to govern three broad aspects of data protection:

Data privacy: The GDPR grants individuals greater control over their personal data, including the right to access, rectify, erase, restrict processing, data portability, object to processing, and be informed about data processing activities
Data security: It requires companies to implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect personal data from unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction
Accountability: Companies are responsible for demonstrating compliance with the GDPR. This includes conducting data protection impact assessments (DPIAs) for high-risk processing activities, such as banking, and appointing a data protection officer (DPO) in certain cases

🚦Remember: Any organization collecting or processing the personal data of EU residents, regardless of the company’s location, needs to be GDPR compliant. This includes small businesses, multinational corporations, and even non-profit organizations.

What data are we talking about?

GDPR focuses on personally identifiable information (PII), which is any information that can be used to identify an individual, directly or indirectly. Examples include:

Direct identifiers: Name, address, social security number or equivalent, telephone number, email address
Indirect identifiers: Gender, race, birth date, geographic indicator, occupation, demographic data
Sensitive PII: Driver’s license number, passport number, biometric data, financial information, medical records, electronic and digital account information, employee personnel records, password information, school identification numbers

What does it mean for businesses?

From a GDPR perspective, you’re either a data controller or data processor working with the data of EU citizens. Depending on which category you fall into, the expectations on you as a business could vary.

Data controller: This is the entity that determines the purpose and means of processing personal data. They’re responsible for ensuring compliance with GDPR
Data processor: This is the entity that processes personal data on behalf of the data controller. They must follow the data controller’s instructions

In a real-world example, a data controller could be a hospital, and a data processor could be a cloud storage provider where the hospital stores patient records. As the data controller, the hospital decides what information to store and how to use it. The cloud provider (data processor) simply stores the data securely according to the hospital’s instructions.

🚦Remember: GDPR places more responsibility on data controllers to create and implement privacy by design into all of their business processes.

GDPR: A privacy law or an information privacy law?

Privacy and information privacy laws are often used interchangeably, but they have distinct nuances. While both are concerned with protecting individuals’ data, they approach the issue from slightly different angles.

Privacy law, in its broadest sense, concerns protecting individuals from intrusions into their personal lives and physical space, such as unwanted home appointments. Information privacy law, on the other hand, is specifically focused on protecting personal data, like IP addresses or emails.

In practice, a service you signed up for could access your location via your phone’s GPS and send you updates specific to your locality, or a delivery service could be shipping items to your home address. If either of these businesses experiences a data breach, your home location is suddenly out there and could be exploited.

Within this context, while the GDPR primarily protects personal data, it also touches on broader privacy concerns.

The GDPR is not just about data protection. It’s about fundamental rights, including the right to privacy and the right to be forgotten.

Max Schrems, Privacy Activist

Now that we’ve cracked the GDPR code (well, at least the basics!), let’s look at the broad steps you need to include in a GDPR audit checklist to become compliant.

1. Map your data sources

Before you can protect it, you need to understand what data you’re collecting. Conduct an audit to identify all the personal data your business accumulates, where it comes from, and how it’s used.

To do this efficiently, you need to look at the following:

Data inventory: Create a detailed inventory of all personal data categories collected, including names, addresses, contact information, financial data, biometric data, and more
Data sources: Identify the sources of this data, such as websites, forms, third-party providers, or physical interactions
Data processing activities: Determine how the data is used, including storage, processing, transmission, and sharing
Data retention: Establish data retention policies (how long the data stays in your system) that align with GDPR principles and minimize the storage of personal data
Data flow: Map the data flow within your organization and to external parties. For example, a third-party delivery service that is executing your shipment order would fall under this category