Under the new GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) guidelines, it is mandatory for all businesses to enhance their data protection measures. Non-compliance could lead to fines as high as 4% of a company's global turnover or €20 million. Insufficient preparation for GDPR compliance, especially in training staff, could therefore result in
significant financial and reputational damage. Furthermore, individual employees may also face personal liabilities for failing to take appropriate action in reporting data breaches.
The Challenge of GDPR Training Across Organizations
However, it is not realistic to train each employee in an organization on the entirety of the GDPR. It can be counter-productive because a lot of information will be irrelevant to a person's role. Also, a one-size-fits-all approach to GDPR training will confuse employees and likely lead to higher compliance costs.
With so much information to process, it’s overwhelming for both employees and management teams. Organizations need to consider the amount of information they give out to their employees, who should be given just enough training to know how to do their job while complying with the law.
GDPR came into effect after an EU legislation and its awareness is not a ‘nice to have thing’ rather it's mandatory to comply with the law. All employees must-have the trainings to understand their responsibility.
Training that is engaging, cost-saving and deliver results
Hoplite Technology helps businesses protect themselves from penalties under the GDPR by providing customized video trainings to every employee based on their role in processing or managing the data. This personalized approach ensures a company-wide protection that can be implemented immediately.
Unlike traditional on-site training with handouts, video trainings can be delivered over the web, at any time. They don't need to be scheduled around employee availability, and they can last as long as necessary to ensure that each person is comfortable with the essential parts of the law. They're also great for refreshers on topics that employees may not use every day.
The GDPR has 99 articles and so many sub clauses, so it's not practical to make a training program on all of these topics. We understand that. That's why we've compiled the must-have portion of the law to teach you what you need to know about GDPR in practical terms — without the legal jargons that could put you to sleep or worse, confuse you.
Essential GDPR Training Topics
Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIA) – Article 35
DPIA is the first step and essential to achieving compliance with data protection legislation. It’s covered in Article 35 of GDPR and without DPIA, your business may face steep fines or even risk losing customers. Your DPIA needs to include information about what you plan to do with the data, where the data will come from and how you'll protect it while processing it. It helps if your DPIA is concise while still providing all the details that are requested by law.
Security of Processing – Article 32
The training slides will explain Article 32 of GDPR that requires companies to adopt technical and organizational measures that ensure a level of data protection appropriate for the risk presented by data processing. If data has been breached, both controllers and processors must notify the supervisory authority without undue delay and, where feasible, no later than 72 hours after having become aware of it.
Privacy Notices - Article 30
A privacy notice is a public statement on the data processing activities of a company or organization. This can help customers make informed decisions about what happens to their personal data when they use a business's services. It usually includes information such as where data is stored, how it's accessed, and who can access it.
You must have to be transparent with data subjects regarding how their personal information will be handled. Privacy notices are a legal requirement under Article 30 of the GDPR but they also offer business benefits beyond complying with the law. Such notices not only document your company's data processing activities but they can also serve as valuable marketing material and give customers a taste of your brand identity and values.
Legal Basis for Processing - Article 6
GDPR mandates under Article 6 that businesses have a valid legal basis for any personal data they collect, process, or store. There are six legal bases for processing personal data under GDPR. Each is designed to protect the company in certain circumstances. The six justifications are: gaining explicit consent from the customer, fulfilling the terms of a contract, pursuing a legitimate interest for the company, maintaining customer safety and security, complying with legal obligations, and acting in the public interest.
The Article 6 allows businesses to share some customer information without consent when law enforcement calls for disclosure. If you think there is a potential threat to an individual's life or physical wellbeing, you may have to disclose the information in order to avert this threat.
Special Category Data - Article 9
Under article 9 of the GDPR, processing of sensitive personal data is prohibited. These include racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, genetic data, biometric data used to uniquely identify a natural person, information about a person's health, and data concerning a person's sex life or sexual orientation.
Data Anonymization - Article 26
Anonymized data is the data that cannot be traced back to an individual. It’s mandatory for data controllers to anonymize data that they release. To meet this requirement, data controllers must remove identifiers like names, identification numbers, and locations. Identifiers like these can help someone piece together personal information to identify an individual.
Data Subject Rights - Article 15
EU General Data Protection Regulation defines personally identifiable information (PII) as “any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person.” While collecting and processing PII, businesses must abide by seven principles: transparency, limit collection, use limitation, accuracy, integrity and security, accountability and individual rights.
Companies must take consent from the people for storing their data and inform them what data is being collected, why it's stored and when it's shared. An explanation of how long the information will be kept before it is deleted. Data subjects have the right to request that data be deleted, corrected, or moved. They have the right to object to certain processing.
The Job of DPO and EU Representative - Article 27
Data protection officers (DPOs) and EU reps are two roles introduced by the GDPR Article 27 to help companies protect their customers' personal data. DPOs will be in charge of ensuring that your organization complies with all GDPR-related laws and regulations and will be accountable if anything goes wrong. The EU representative works as a mediatory between your company, data subjects and supervisory authority. They are tasked with handling data subjects' requests, exercising their rights, and reporting any data protection issues to supervisory authorities.
How Often Employee Training Should Be Conducted
One of the key ways for businesses to ensure they are ready to comply with the GDPR will be to make sure their employees are well-trained. The Information Commissioner's Office has suggested that businesses should review their compliance training at least once a year and that the training should cover the basics of data protection law.
Conclusion
The European Commission has adopted revamped data transfer tools with more legal and privacy safeguards to allow companies to transfer Europeans' data securely around the world. "We have incorporated some elements of transparency, accountability in full compliance with the GDPR," EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders told reporters in June 2021.
Online video training provides numerous benefits over traditional classroom training: they not only save money and resources but also help employees learn and retain information more easily. That's because the videos contain short and succinct breakdowns of applicable laws on slides. This lets employees start watching right away without needing to figure out how to apply the information. With no cost associated with travel, online videos save businesses time and money as well as keep employees engaged.
Useful Reference :
ISO Publicly Available Standards - ISO/IEC 29100:2011 https://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/index.html