GDPR 2024: Important EU Directives For Business Owners To Comply With

Let's check out main new rules of personal data processing in EU and how business owners working with EU should react to new GDPR.

First, let's determine shortly what is GDPR. It has two main doctrines as follows:

• EU citizens can control their data in a more efficient way;
• Unification of data protection rules across all European Union; 
• More proper personal data protection.

What is personal data? Let's define it as follows:

And GDPR regulation includes six basic principles of data processing in it's basis:

Now let's delve into GDPR meaning and what it is important.

What is GDPR compliance in general? It is necessary to note that compliance with GDPR is required for all business owners that use and process personal data of EU citizens. Moreover, even if a company is located not in EU but it handles personal data of EU residents, it should follow GDPR as well. Full information about GDPR rules you can find on the official website.

But there are a few types of business that should be prepared to new regulations in the first turn, I will list them below.

That is the answer to the question who is affected by GDPR. So, if you are engaged in one of the business type mentioned above, you should get all information prepared to avoid penalties and violations. Next section will spell out how to prepare your business to make it compliant with GDPR.

How to prepare to GDPR? The core of GDPR lies in privacy by design term. This term means confidentiality in information technology and large-scale network data systems. And there are main steps you should take to start the compliance of your business with EU data protection directive.

You should create a scheme where you will indicate the scope of the personal data you work with, what you do with this data, how you use it, where it comes from and where it goes. So, the full information about the route of personal data you work with should be displayed in your document. Also, you should indicate data location, who has access to it and whether there are any risks related to personal data storage.

Complying with the General Data Protection Regulation, you should remember that you need to keep a necessary information only. If there is an outdated information, you should delete it. Also, if you find data that doesn't bear any benefits, you need to delete it as well. GDPR principle requires more proper handling of personal data. That is why when you start sorting out all data, determine what necessity that or another piece of data bears.

Of course, you should provide all data with a proper protection to prevent possible data breaches. Your infrastructure should have modern data protection technologies to keep all data safe. Also, elaborate possible measure you should take in case of a data breach. Don't forget to comply all security issues with your suppliers if you are engaged in outsourcing custom software development.

According to GDPR EU data directive, personal data of all your customers can be processed by you only when all customers confirm the right to use their data. Implied consent is not an option anymore. So, take all important documents like agreements and statements, analyze them and adjust them according to GDPR rules to provide users with information security and privacy.

To make it possible, you should consider that according to GDPR an individual has 8 rights for:

These are all rights you should follow, and it is necessary to prepare relevant policies and take measures to solve any issues mentioned above if they arise. And you should determine how you will provide all customers with the access to their data, how to delete all information properly and so on.

Importance of data protection is hard to overestimate. It is related to all companies that perform regular wide-scale surveys, monitoring of individual (as it was mentioned above) or companies that building EHR/EMR systems or criminal records. The appointed person position will be called a Data Protection Officer (DPO).

GDPR compliance for small business and the large one is highly important since If you violate GDPR rules, you will be fined up to 4% of annual turnover or 20 million EUR, depending on which amount is higher.

Therefore, you cannot ignore new regulation if you plan to develop your business and expand your customer database.

As you can see, to meet GDPR requirements, it is necessary to create internal policies of data protection, train staff, verify processing data activity, maintain documentation concerning processing procedures, and appoint a manager who will be responsible for personal data processing.

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And don't forget - It doesn't matter what type of business you own if you process personal data of EU citizens. You should make your business comply with GDPR without any barriers.

Why GDPR is a good option

These rules may seem too complicated and strict, but, in fact, there are some obvious benefits of GDPR compliance:

• It is much easier to follow one set of rules than considering national particularities of personal data processing of each separate EU country;

• The reform is oriented to the development of economic growth with the help of expenses and bureaucracy reduction for companies collaborating with EU. So, GDPR impact on business can be really positive;

• Also, according to new rules, some liabilities can be changed due to the size of the business, the nature of data processed and other factors;

• It will increase customers' trust to your business if they know that their data is secured reliably.

So, GDPR is an important legislative document that increases the level of personal data protection in EU and outside. Each company should study it in detail. Cleveroad did it as well as we cooperate with customers from Europe.

Also, this document increases the trust of consumers, and business field can use all capabilities in a single European market. So watch all data you process carefully to prevent data leakage and illegal control of this data by third parties. If you have any questions, you plan to create your software or you concern about the privacy of your software - contact us and subscribe to our blog not to the miss important news!