How much do you know about data protection?

Related Sector: Covert, Intel & Specialist

When anyone mentions data protection or GDPR, I know from experience that most people’s eyes glaze over. I have also, on occasions, been the one with the eye glazing when it was mentioned to me. However, in the past, and I am a little ashamed to admit this, I didn’t actually realise how important data protection should have been to me in my day job and no matter what your role, it is as equally important to you.

No matter where you work, you probably ‘collect’ personal data in one form or another, whether it’s the details of clients in the form of their name, email address or telephone number through to location data or even IP addresses or cookie ID’s.

Some of you will even obtain sensitive personal data which can include items such as racial or ethnic origin, their political opinions, their religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, health or even in some circumstances details concerning a person’s sex life or sexual orientation.

If you gather any sort of person data regardless of whether it is sensitive or not, then no matter what it is used for or how big your organisation is, it isn’t someone else’s problem to manage it. You NEED to be aware of the issues and what you need to do to comply with the law, otherwise there can be some significant sanctions for non-compliance.

Sadly, there are too many examples of people not handling data correctly and then having to deal with the fallout in terms of financial penalties and reputational damage.

Until now data protection training has been seen as very dreary and something only Data Protection Officers need to know. The reality is that if you gather or process anyone’s personal data then you need to understand what it is and what you should do with it.

We provide 'Understanding Data Protection' training that is far from dreary. It covers the legislation, but in an easy to digest way with a lot of practical examples of how to manage data. The course is delivered by our subject matter expert in data protection and Freedom of Information (FOI).

This 1-day course (£275+VAT) will next run virtually on 13^th July, 8^th September and 14^th December.

For more information or to book your place please visit our Understanding Data Protection course webpage

Author: Adrian Ramdat, Director of Covert, Intel & Specialist Training at Bond Solon
This article was first published on Friday 14^th May 2021.