Some GDPR Compliance Advice

The European Union’s new General Data Protection Regulation goes into effect May 25. But its reach will go far beyond the EU. It will impact any organization that processes or otherwise touches EU citizen data.

So businesses and other organizations around the globe have been working to adjust practices and processes to address the GDPR. And contact centers are among the environments that are making such adjustments. Because EU regulators have said they will issue fines of as high as 20 million EUR, or 4 percent of a company’s annual revenue, to those organizations that do not comply with GDPR.

“Any information relating to ‘an identified or identifiable natural person’ is considered personal data,” notes Chuck Ciarlo of Monet Software (News - Alert), which provides cloud-based call center management solutions. “This includes not just names, but online identifiers and data that track a person’s location.”

So if you own, operate, or use a contact center, there are a few key things you should look at relative to your environment, suggests Ciarlo. He suggests that contact centers perform a complete data inventory to identify what information they’re collecting and using.

Contact centers should also monitor and adopt best practices to enjoy any safe harbors regulators afford, he says. Plus, contact centers may want to consider creating limited liability establishments in the EU jurisdiction offering regulatory oversight, he adds.

“People are taking GDPR seriously because of how many high-profile data breaches we have all witnessed in the last few years,” said Ferruh Mavituna, CEO of Netsparker, a web applications security company. “In the past, blame for data breaches was shifted around from party to party. Was it the business? The individual? The government? GDPR removes the ambiguity. As of May 25, businesses are responsible for data breaches. As a result, companies will have to restructure how they handle data, and, if they don’t have a sound IT infrastructure, they will have to rebuild from the ground up.”

Edited by Maurice Nagle