GDPR Compliance Checklist

by Nash V

What is the GDPR Compliance Checklist?

The GDPR Compliance Checklist lists the steps you need to take to be compliant with GDPR. This checklist will help you identify those areas where your company may not fully comply with the regulations. It will also help you identify the steps that need to be taken for your company to achieve GDPR compliance.

GDPR Compliance checklist 

GDPR is a set of requirements that must be followed for an organisation to meet data protection obligations and avoid heavy fines. This checklist details what you need to do to ensure your company is complying with GDPR and meeting customers' expectations by protecting their data and using it responsibly.

Six Key Principles of GDPR Compliance

1.Accountability: Accountability is the essential principle in GDPR compliance. It's not enough to comply with the law; organisations must demonstrate and document their compliance. We will cover how to be accountable for your GDPR compliance efforts:

1) When accountability starts and ends.

2) Accountability requirements for different data processing activities.

3) The importance of documenting everything you do.

4) How you can use an accountability checklist as a starting point to ensure compliance.

The accountability principle is outlined in Article 28 of the GDPR, which states: "The controller shall be responsible for and be able to demonstrate compliance with the principles" (Recital 71). This means that it's not enough to comply with General Data Protection Regulation laws; organisations must also prove they are complying through documented proof and transparency within their organisation."

2. Data Security: Implement Technical Measures- You need to implement technical measures such as encryption or pseudonymization of data.

#2: Implement Organisational Measures- You need to implement organisational measures such as staff training and limiting access to your personal information. This can be done by implementing processes for dealing with a data breach.

Data security is a massive concern for many people, and it should be evident that your data needs to be secure as well. Implementing technical measures like encryption or pseudonymization are essential parts of securing your personal information. Organisational measures such as staff training and limiting access to sensitive PII can help support appropriate data protection compliance programs in place at an organization-level, too (e.g., due diligence processes). On top of everything else, having procedures in place for dealing with incidents/breaches involving personal data (e.g., incident response plans) helps keep things running smoothly when something goes wrong.

3.Lawfulness, fairness, and transparency: The GDPR set out to establish a high level of data protection and privacy for EU citizens. The regulation is designed to ensure that individuals are not unfairly or disproportionately affected by the processing of their data. This includes ensuring that any data processing is conducted fairly, transparently, and with clear accountability always. It also requires entities to conduct information audits to determine what information they process, who it can be disclosed to, how long it will be kept for, and where it may be transferred outside the EEA.

Any data processing activities must be conducted with fairness, transparency, and accountability in mind. To achieve this, entities must conduct information audits to determine the scope of their data processing practices (e.g., impact assessments). They should also provide concise, transparent, intelligible, and easily understandable information about processing users' data.

4.Purpose Limitation: Any data processing should be limited to only what the company needs for the specific task, and it should not be done without explicit consent from users. The principle is meant to protect user's privacy and allow them to control their data. There are three ways that a company can limit its use of personal information: either by using pseudonymous data or anonymizing data, restricting the time during which they keep it, or specifying precisely what they plan on doing with it before collecting it in the first place.

5.Accuracy: The Accuracy in GDPR Compliance Checklist to make sure that all your bases are covered. This checklist will help ensure that there are no gaps or holes for fines and penalties from regulators. In addition, it helps create a plan for future data protection strategies and identify any potential risks.

6.Storage Limitation: In the GDPR Compliance Checklist, one of the most important steps is to document your current data retention policy. The first step is to identify what information on your website needs to be stored and how long it should be retained. Once this has been determined, we recommend keeping it in an external location such as Google Drive or Dropbox so that you comply with the storage limitation requirement under Article 30 of GDPR.

Features and Advantages of GDPR Compliance Checklist

Features:

This checklist is a summary of those tasks and what needs to happen for your organisation.

  • Task Detail - This task detail should give you an overview of what needs to happen for your organisation to meet the requirements set out by GDPR.
  • Each task has an owner, start date, end date, Due Days, Est Hours, Actual Hours, and yes/no.
  • All the columns marked in Pink; should not be changed unless the necessary changes are done.
  • Based on the Planned start date and Planned end date, the due date is populated.
  • There is the ADD NEW and DELETE button, where you can add several tasks and delete the resources as necessary.

Advantages:

The following list will help you make sure you are compliant with the new regulations.

  • Work with an experienced data protection officer who can offer guidance and advice on how to stay compliant with the GDPR and monitor any changes that may be necessary for your business.
  • Update privacy policies and notice pages to reflect any changes made by the GDPR.
  • Take time to review what personal data has been collected from customers, clients, or employees so that it can be secured appropriately and disposed of when no longer needed.