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Why Your Online Business Needs Data Protection Training
Guest Post by Stuart Cooke of Evalian Data Protection Services
Nowadays, almost every business will collect and process personal data on a daily basis. Because of this, data protection has become a hot topic in recent years, particularly with the implementation of the new General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) back in May 2018.
As a result of these new regulations, every company had to become compliant, meaning that many professionals had to very quickly learn and understand data protection rules.
While it may have been the job of IT teams and senior managers to help get new GDPR processes and policies underway, everyone needs to be educated about data protection at some stage. In fact, many experts have emphasized the importance of staff training around GDPR compliance.
In this guide, we’ll outline six of the key reason why your business needs to offer data protection training to all staff – just in case this is something you hadn’t previously considered.
1. Data protection is a legal requirement
We’ve briefly touched on GDPR in the introduction and this is ultimately the biggest reason that your business needs to offer data protection training to all its staff. Every individual employee contributes to the running of your business in some way, many of them dealing with the data you collect.
As such, it’s important that they have at the very least, a basic understanding of GDPR and what your business and themselves as individuals, need to do in order to stay compliant.
For example, should you fall victim to a data breach you have just 72 hours the report the breach under the GDPR guidelines, if your staff are unaware of this and the problem isn’t reported or effectively dealt with, you could find yourself facing a large fine.
RELATED POST: Is Your Blog GDPR Compliant?
2. For accountability
One of the key parts of GDPR is that the controller is held accountable for their security systems, and business owners must feel safe in the knowledge that they’re doing all they can to keep this data safe.
Not training your staff could be seen as neglecting your responsibility to protect personal data as you haven’t done everything in your power to make the business as secure as possible.
It also means that should there be a breach due to human error, the business is accountable even if it was an honest mistake. So for the most part, it’s best that everyone is aware of the risks and how to keep your systems secure.
3. To reduce human error
Unfortunately, cybercriminals rely on human error to help them hack into a business’ systems and access their data. This could be from sloppy password policies or staff responding to fraudulent emails.
Whatever their tactic, it is often employees that open the doors for them to be able to steal or tamper with sensitive information. For this reason, it is a good idea to train all staff on strong cybersecurity practises and the importance of data protection.
This also means that your team will feel more confident in spotting and reporting suspicious activity. They’ll understand the importance of keeping their passwords safe and secure, not downloading anything from unknown sources and not replying to potentially fraudulent emails.
All of which will help to reduce the risk of human error and keep your data safe.
4. Your reputation depends on it
A good reputation is hugely important for any business and believe it or not, data protection plays a role in this. If you fall victim to a data breach, you’ll have to notify your clients, customers or users of your website.
Even if you’re able to quickly rectify the situation, the damage is already done. Most people aren’t going to want to share their personal information with a company that has been or is vulnerable to hacking.
So actually, a strong security strategy is almost a selling point and something to boast about!
But where does staff training come in? Quite simply, your staff need to understand how to keep your data safe as best they can. Even in an online business organization, your team needs to know why it’s important to protect data.
If everyone is confident in their role, their knowledge of data protection and their ability to report any issues, your customers/clients are going to feel like they’re in capable hands and this can help you to build a strong reputation.
5. To be able to spot the signs and rectify the situation
Training your team on data protection and cybersecurity means they’ll feel more cable of spotting the signs of a data breach or suspicious activity.
There are several simple ways to spot a breach or potential hacking for example:
- Unusual login activity
- Frequent pop-ups
- Strange emails
- Slow networks
- Critical file changes
- Devices look like they’ve been tampered with
- Unusual administration activity
So if your team are aware of these signs they can report the issue to the appropriate team (or third-party provider if you don’t have an in-house team), before the situation gets any worse.
This can help to reduce the risk of breaches and allow them to act quickly should hackers make it into your systems.
6. To keep your business running smoothly
Let’s face it, a data breach or any other type of security threat is bad for business. It causes disruptions and creates extra work. So in order to keep your business running smoothly, it makes sense that all staff are trained on the importance of data protection and the regulations and systems you’re putting in place to keep your systems safe.
The more people that are clued up on data protection the safer your business is. This means that ultimately you can keep everything running as smoothly as possible and feel confident that you’ve done all you can to keep your data secure.
It’s time to get training for data protection
As you can see there are several reasons why your business needs to run data protection training for all staff. If you haven’t run any workshops or training courses so far, it’s vital that you start to think about this.
There are a number of choices out there for how you can conduct this training, but ultimately it is only going to benefit your business and help to keep your data safe and your company GDPR compliant.
GDPR is so confusing thsnk you for this article. It makes me feel better that I did all the right things and found a few things to tweak along the way. You are awesome Sasha!
You’re welcome, Amber! It is definitely hard to wrap your head around but it really is important that we as bloggers, understand and make sure that our readers and us are protected. Thanks for reading!
Very useful article! Data protection is so important
Thanks Lara! I think data protection for any business owner (solo or with employees) is important to understand.
Amazing post, Sasha! With the new CCPA laws coming into effect this year I have been really focusing on this. It is great to know exactly why we are doing this. Thanks for all the info!
Thanks, Jenn! Yes, I’m finally starting to piece everything together on why we need all these policies in our blog and it makes total sense. Thanks for reading 🙂
Great article. I personally don’t collect information on my blog yet because I need to master security measures. It seems like breaches are happening everywhere today.
Hi Courtney! Do you have analytics installed or use cookies? These are considered collecting information. If you are, you do need to make sure to protect the info you are collecting – even if you’re not doing anything with it.
The whole GDPR thing is a little overwhelming to me, but this was a good reminder that I need to make sure to learn more about it and be sure my site is covered.
I remember when I first heard GDPR and felt super-overwhelmed. As I learn more and use tools like Lucrezia’s bundle to implement it all, it’s finally coming together. Definitely some piece of mind that I’m taking those necessary steps.
Helpful information as always. I admit this is not something I knew much about as a new blogger. ? My business has a staff of one, so I guess she better get her act together, ha.
Hahahhaaa! Too funny, Valerie! But you’re right, I don’t think many bloggers think about data security because we are running solo but it’s really important just the same. Thanks for reading 🙂
It had never occurred to me that even my small business needed cyber security training until now. Thank you so much for the awareness and clarity.
You’re welcome, Stacy! I think that data security is one of those things that bloggers don’t think of but really should because all of our content is online. Thanks for reading!
This subject is like a foreign language to me. I’ve purchased templates but I’m just never sure if I’m doing it right or not. Interesting that there is a service to train your business and team. Maybe that is something I can look into to make sense of all the regulations. Thanks for this!
It is definitely something to wrap your head around for sure! I’m not sure if you already saw this, but on Tuesday at 7pm MST, I’m doing a live interview on Blogging Babes Collective with Lucrezia who is a blogger and lawyer who is coming on to answer questions about some of this! Check it out if you have some time 🙂
Amazing information here, something I am definitely focusing on this year!
Thanks, Rae Marie! So glad that you enjoyed the post. Data protection is definitely important in business and I think there is a lot of focus on it right now with the CCPA regulations.
Very informative article. GDPR is always complicated. Thanks for the detailed info.
You’re welcome, Nilakshi! It’s great when you can break down the legalese stuff into little pieces. It definitely makes it easier to understand. Thanks for reading 🙂
Very informative! This will be getting my attention.
Thanks, Julie Ann! So glad you enjoyed the post!
Again, so much useful information from you! Granted, its a bit overwhelming BUT I love what you have to say and need to get myself together! Thanks, Sasha!
Thanks, Lauren! Things can definitely be overwhelming in blog-land, but just try to take the info in one piece at a time if you can. Once you’ve digested, move on to the next – it makes processing so much easier when you’re not jumping all over the place. Thanks for reading!
I remember being totally overwhelmed by GDRP. I totally wish I’d had this resource because it would have made things a lot easier. I put off publishing my blog a YEAR. Look at all that wasted time. Thanks for all the great info you share. It’s amazing.
I totally hear you! All that legal stuff had me stumped and scared to start as well. I’m so glad that you found this article helpful!