Its All About The Data
Posted on 9th December 2019 at 10:32
In the social, online world we live in, no matter the size, type or sector of your business, of one thing we can be very sure...
It’s all about the data..!
Whether:-
Sharing information with our contacts.
Following a GDPR/Cyber Compliance Journey.
Maintaining our employee/customer/client details.
Trying to avoid a Cyber-attack.
Implementing appropriate Technical & Organisational measures
It’s all about the data..!
• The data you have.
• The data you store.
• The data you share.
• The data you protect.
The data you have
As any business grows…
• We gain more customers.
• To serve the customers, we increase our staff.
• To manage the increase in staff we increase our infrastructure.
In every situation…the data within our organisation increases…
That data can come in many types:-
o Customer data.
o Staff data.
o Supplier data.
o Company specific data.
That data can take many forms:-
o Informational.
o Transactional.
o Maintained.
Most importantly - Your data may not necessarily all be in an electronic form.
The data you store
Now we have our data what do we do with it?
Firstly the objective of any business is to thrive, to thrive we must grow revenue and to do this we must increase sales.
As we grow our business must be efficient as we gain more customers we gain more data, we must ensure that the data we collect works for us to do this we are likely to introduce more technology which could include :-
An Email solution.
Payroll.
CRM.
Accounting system.
HR System.
Social Media Platforms
Marketing Solution.
Business Intelligence.
The unfortunate side-effects of this is that we now have our data neatly package in our systems and we must consider the people who have access to the data we have.
The data you share
Whilst we may not understand, we do share our company data a lot more than we may initially think and surprisingly not necessarily as obviously as we may consider.
We share our data in many ways including:-
By email with our customers, suppliers & employees.
With our outsourced providers who could include:-
o Accounting
o Marketing
o Administration
o Catering
o Warehouse
o HR
o IT
o Temporary staff
and it is imperative that we:-
Understand how we share our data.
Why we need to share our data.
Who we can share our data with.
How we can share effectively remaining compliant
The Data you protect
The data contained within your organisation, isn’t your data, you are simply a “Guardian of your galaxy” in this case the galaxy is your data, this is reflected particularly by GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).
For any organisation GDPR determines the way in which Data should be created, managed and stored within their business.
GDPR also determines how long data should exist and most importantly when it is time to remove the data on whatever media it is stored, the data must be removed securely beyond question and without compromise.
GDPR expects that every organisation and everyone contained within that organisation no matter the size is responsibly accountable for the data within their galaxy, data that must be protected to the best of their ability using “Appropriate Technical & Organisational Measures”.
One very important consideration that many forget is that protecting our data is not necessarily from external sources as many issues can occur within our business.
To protect your data GDPR requires you to implement your appropriate measures and these should include:-
Ensure that only appropriate people have access.
Allow people to have access only to the data that they should.
Electronic data is encrypted & non-electronic data has suitable security protocols.
Security software is installed & managed.
All devices are always up-to-date with full patch management
Both physical & logical perimeter access controls are in place.
In Conclusion
Our data is the most important currency in our business and like an actual currency we need to ensure that we maintain its integrity by keeping it safe, secure and protected, as failure to do so can be very costly to our business indeed:-
The loss of reputation.
Loss of Customers
Fines.
Loss of revenue.
Loss of confidence.
Our Solution...
At JCBcs We offer comprehensive GDPR/Cyber Consultancy that will ensure that your business understands & follows a correct & tailored Compliance Journey, after all…
It's all about the data!
Share this post:
