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Axon Urges Local Businesses to Prepare Now for GDPR


IT company says dont panic! And offers advice and guidance in advance of upcoming data regulation change

Axon Urges Local Businesses to Prepare Now for GDPR


"GDPR will replace the Data Protection Act and is a regulatory framework with much greater scope, ultimately strengthening and harmonising data protection laws within the EU."
Graham Fern, Technical Director



Macclesfield based IT solutions firm Axon is urging local businesses to prepare now for the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – a set of EU-wide data privacy rules which become law on 25th May 2018 and will be adopted by the UK post-Brexit. 

GDPR is being billed as one of the most significant changes to EU privacy in the last 20 years. It affects any organisation that provides goods and services to EU citizens, and will have a significant impact on the way a business must handle and protect personal data – failure to do so could result in substantial fines of either €20 Million or 4 percent of annual global turnover, whichever is greater.  

Axon – a Microsoft Gold Partner – is advising customers and local businesses to start working towards compliance now, offering a host of resources and information available to download via its website. The company is also running a series of workshops to help businesses understand how the law will affect them, and how to prepare for the forthcoming changes.  

Graham Fern, Technical Director for Axon commented: “GDPR will replace the Data Protection Act and is a regulatory framework with much greater scope, ultimately strengthening and harmonising data protection laws within the EU. Many people have been lauding GDPR compliance as a massive, impossibly complex job. This doesn’t have to be the case. We don’t our want customers to panic.”  

Important regulations within the GDPR include;  

·         Personal data. GDPR protects personal data. This includes everything from names, contacts, and transactions to communication logs, social media posts, IP addresses, and consumer profiling/marketing preferences. And it relates to personal, not business data.  

·         Right to access. Your customers can ask whether you are holding data on them. If you are, they can also ask why, and where you are storing it. 

·         Right to be forgotten. This entitles the data subject to have you delete their personal data. You must also cease circulation of the data and have third parties halt processing of the data. 

·         Data portability. This is the right of a data subject to receive the personal data concerning them in a ‘commonly used and machine-readable format’. They have the right to transmit this data to another organisation. 

·         Penalties. If your organisation is non-compliant you will suffer fines of either €20 million or 4 percent of annual global turnover, whichever is greater.  

·         Breach notification. Organisations must inform the ICO of any data breach within 72 hours.  

Graham Fern added: “Most companies will have security policies in place. If yours doesn’t, you should start working on them to protect your business. It is imperative that businesses use relevant IT systems and security to ensure privacy compliance is reached. You must protect all devices, including those owned by employees. If there is a security breach and your data is compromised, the responsibility lies with you - even if it was a staff member who caused the breach. If you haven’t already, you should start your journey towards compliance as soon as possible. Your business needs to be transparent about the ways you store, transfer and discard data.”  

The GDPR aims primarily to give control back to citizens and residents over their personal data and to simplify the regulatory environment for international business by unifying the regulation within the EU. The regulations are set to be mirrored in UK law post-Brexit meaning British firms will still be required to follow the new guidelines, which will result in greater transparency across the board and a safer digital place to do business. 

Relevant resources around GDPR can be found on Axon’s website at www.axon-it.com/blog, on the firm’s social media feeds or interested companies can register for Axon’s upcoming workshop – Is Your Business GDPR Ready? taking place at Mottram Hall, Cheshire on 15th November by visiting https://axongdpr.eventbrite.co.uk. 
 

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