The road to GDPR compliance begins with understanding your obligations and requirements relative to the current state of your organization.

Information about the source of personal data is the starting point of any good security posture. Automating the monitoring of critical events from source systems allows you to verify the effectiveness of your default privacy.

Creating a defensive posture - one in which organizations can quickly, easily and conclusively demonstrate to regulators that they are making reasonable efforts to comply - is both sensible and already necessary, as these are the requirements set out in the new standards on the protection of personal data.

While such a strategy will not completely cover the risk of fines, it will help organizations demonstrate that GDPR procedures are based on sound data protection principles in correlation with relevant business principles.

Even where an initial GDPR program envisages a one-off solution or activity to achieve compliance and comfort, subsequent steps will require the introduction of a repeatable, measurable and controllable process through which DPO practitioners and businesses can demonstrate reasonable and ongoing management and control.

Basic steps to create a defensive position:

1. Establishing the GDPR strategy, controls and procedures.
2. Provide executive recommendations and engagement to cross-functional teams including IT, Legal, Operations and Lines of Business.
3. Ensure that the actions of the compliance team are based on the same business principles as your organization.
4. Take advantage of solutions that automate monitoring, workflow and alerts.
5. Use continuous monitoring as a reliable way to understand compliance behaviour in real-time.
6. Be prepared to turn data directly into meaningful reports for internal and external components.
7. Harmonize personal data management with other obligations and opportunities.
8. Create a continuous improvement cycle to regularly update the organization's compliance efforts and help develop industry standards.

GDPR dictates an extraordinary change in data protection practices. As organizations strive to create modern standards, at some point accumulated knowledge will lead to lessons being learned.

The technology will help organizations work smarter while developing a readily available security framework. Intelligent, automated workflow solutions will remove uncertainty and replace complexity in compliance with GDPR.

If you need a GDPR Audit, Consultation, TIA or Training, please contact us to offer you a customized solution.