News
Comment on GDPR anniversary
May 2021 by Oliver Cronk, Chief IT Architect for EMEA chez Tanium
As GDPR approaches its third anniversary, it’s important to look at the uncertainty Covid-19 has caused and how it has forced businesses to adapt their data rules. The comment from Oliver Cronk, Chief IT Architect at Tanium:
“GDPR has now been in place for three years, but the ICO relaxed its enforcement of the law last year, meaning investigations and fines were temporarily reduced until organisations could recover from Covid-19. Since the announcement was made, it’s highly possible that GDPR compliance has become less of a focus for some organisations. When you combine this with the fact that many organisations have had their attention drawn to other priorities during the pandemic, I believe some oversights could happen which will incur large GDPR fines over the next year or two.
It’s possible to minimise this risk. As Covid-19 restrictions continue to ease in many parts of the world, now is an opportune time for organisations to assess how they are operating to ensure any new processes or ways of working are fully GDPR compliant. To correctly follow the guidelines, enterprises should work with on their Data Protection Officers to provide support for the whole organisation. Particularly when new operating models and processes have had to be introduce overnight in many cases.
Examples of these changes are sectors such as hospitality which are now collecting more personal information from customers than ever due to new pandemic related processes, and it’s easy to fall into the trap of not clearly declaring what the data is being used for, how it’s being processed and how long it will be kept. Organisations need to make sure compliance for post pandemic processes aren’t overlooked or they may be in for nasty surprises such as fines in the future.”
