Background of GDPR
After the privacy concerns escalated via allegations faced by the CEO of Facebook- Mark Zuckerberg in March 2018, data privacy issues took a new turn and grabbed global attention.
As a ripple effect, people started to raise their individual privacy concerns. Active and passive digital footprints become a matter of discussion, which gave rise to several questions.
The ideology of what lies under the umbrella of personal data and what does not became a serious issue for the European Union too. That is when the idea of General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR got seeded, and eventually updated the laws of personal data privacy protection and control.
Fundamentals of GDPR
The ultimate aim of this regulation was to legally protect basic individual privacy while making such trade-offs which do not hurt the organizations excessively. Meanwhile, it helped European inhabitants to recognize the importance of correct use of their personal data. Here are the fundamental rights given to data subjects under GDPR.
A person lying under the authority of the EU will have rights to:
- Have complete and free access to his/her personal data for the lifetime
- Make changes to correct the existing data
- Erase data with all the possible traces
- Restrict the processing of his/her data
- Get notified when a breach occurs
- Transfer his/her data to another organization
- Object over any decision relevant to processing, storage or circulation etc. of his/her data
- Disapprove automated decisions made by data controller or processor
This means that a European data subject now has the right to ask what, how, where, why and when his/her data is being used. The subject can even ask data controller and processor to delete, modify, correct, retrieve or move its data from one data controller to another.
Why Compliance Is Inevitable?
As there is no concrete definition of compliance, there is no any sure-fire way to avoid the fines. Companies have to rush to respond to each request no matter how much extra time, costs and resources it takes.
GDPR Implications for Businesses
Major Challenges Followed by GDPR
According to the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), the major obstacles faced by organizations to be GDPR compliant are to make data portable, forgettable and to elicit consent. In this context, defining optimized business procedures can be a challenge for data privacy professionals.
Some businesses might even shift their focus from productivity to process compliance, data governance and quality control because these requirements are the most highlighted in GDPR.
More precisely, the main challenges faced by businesses are:
Change Management
It is difficult and time-consuming to make such huge structural changes in live processes and legacy systems, especially for multinational companies.
Documentation
Data Integrity & Standardization
Inevitable Human Factor
Overhead Costs
Data Identification & Classification
Data Timeliness
Data Security
Audit & Compliance
Enforcement Outside EU Scope
All these challenges are not a stand-alone activity shouldered by your DPO (data protection officer), CIO (chief information officer) or CISO (chief information security officer). It needs an overall strategy re-design and process makeover, which acquire special attention, task force and upskilled employees to meet the requirements GDPR.
A closer look at the advantages of solving GDPR with BPM
That being said, Business process management (BPM) is a powerful approach that is able to address all the aforementioned challenges of GDPR. BPM tools can be easily built into the existing business process framework of the organization and expand each of the 7 pillars of GDPR in to the business process hierarchy, turning asynchronous business activities and fragmented workflows into well-designed and efficient processes complying with GDPR definitions. This will also ensure that all new processes introduced or existing processes undergoing change due to GDPR will be fully compliant.
This way, ongoing management and maintenance will become easier, and accountabilities will be crystal clear. At the end of the day, process optimization, risk management and regulatory compliance are the shared goals of BPM and GDPR.
BPM methodology can increase the business productivity exponentially with the help of some off-the-shelf BPM tools and applications offering numerous basic and add-on features which can be mapped into the compliance requirements.
Here are some salient features of the BPM tools and their correspondence with GDPR:
Impact Analysis
Monitoring & Analysis
Data Ownership based on Segregation of Duties
Approval Cycles & Security Setting
Flexibility & Accessibility
Notifications & Alerts
Audit Trails
Collaboration
Un-learning & Re-learning
How Interfacing can help
The Enterprise Process Center – Catalyst for Your GDPR Implementation
Interfacing’s Enterprise Process Center ® (EPC), a recognized leading BPM & GRC solution, offers a wide range of modules from process optimization, document management, performance analysis, data governance, risk assessment, to audit and control. Beyond a process modeling tool, the EPC has helped numerous organizations to improve processes, automate workflows, document system data enhance performance, mitigate risks and share knowledge. The EPC will be the silver bullet that enables:
GDPR In A Nutshell
With the help of advanced BPM tools, businesses can focus on quality and security without sacrificing productivity and efficiency. BPM tools are a critical tactic that allows European customer to trust their data processors and controllers, and eventually increase loyalty and retention to a brand.
BPM tools can be an all-in-one solution to the giant bundle of problems followed by GDPR, and there is no doubt that businesses should start implementing such tools to pave the path towards a better future.
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