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Did you know that new data protection regulations will soon come in to force which will govern how you protect and distribute customer data?
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The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) enhances rights and obligations from the current Data Protection Act and comes in to effect in just over six month’s time, on 25th May 2018.
In order to help small businesses prepare for the change in regulations, the Information Commissioner’s Office will launch a dedicated telephone service offering guidance and targeted information.
The new service will go live on 1 November 2017 and will be based around the ICO’s existing public helpline, which handled around 190,000 calls last year.
The ICO is also revising its simple-to-use SME toolkit – a resource used by around 9,000 businesses a month since January 2016 – into a GDPR checklist that will allow businesses themselves to identify gaps in their own preparation for the new law.
Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said:
“There are 5.4 million businesses in the UK that employ fewer than 250 people. When it comes to data protection, surveys show they tend to be less well prepared. We know that most businesses want to get things right but often struggle to find the key steps to get started. They also have less time and money to invest in getting it right. They may not have compliance teams or data protection officers or access to legal advice.
“The businesses may be small but they still hold important personal information and the need to gain the trust of their customers is just as real.”
Organisations that have yet to begin preparing for the GDPR can access a range of resources on the ICO’s dedicated data protection reform web pages.
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