The EU’s Data Protection pride and joy, GDPR, came in a little over seven months ago. Despite this, many workers are still not compliant and, worse still, are unaware that they are doing anything wrong.
Proband’s recent survey of 1,002 workers in either full or part-time employment, close to 65% of the individuals surveyed admitted to having forwarded a customer email to their own personal email account in the months following the introduction of GDPR in May 2018. Furthermore, 84% of those who admitted to such actions didn’t believe they were actually doing anything wrong. Whilst their intentions may be completely harmless, perhaps only forwarding the email in order to work from home, this does contravene the regulations as it places sensitive customer information outside the control of the employer and into an unauthorised third-party’s control.
Championed by the Information Commissioner’s Office, GDPR is an essential part of modern business practices and the repercussions of breaching its regulations far outweigh those of its predecessors. These include fines of up to 4% of annual global turnover or €20 million – whichever is greater, and ignorance of the compliance requirements is unlikely to hold much weight in legal proceedings.
Personal data in all forms has an ever-growing significance on customer loyalty and trust. This, coupled with the potential financial consequences, cannot be ignored by businesses.