{"id":29070,"date":"2019-04-01T14:29:08","date_gmt":"2019-04-01T13:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/?p=29070"},"modified":"2019-04-01T14:29:08","modified_gmt":"2019-04-01T13:29:08","slug":"in-a-gdpr-world-how-can-companies-protect-employee-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/2019\/04\/01\/in-a-gdpr-world-how-can-companies-protect-employee-data\/","title":{"rendered":"In a GDPR world, how can companies protect employee data?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Patrick Van der Mijl, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, Speakap, discusses potential threats to organisations over non-compliance with GDPR.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

On May 25, 2018, the EU GDPR officially came into effect. This data privacy regulation, which has transformed the digital landscape, overhauled how companies collect, store, process and remove data.<\/p>\n

But according to a recent poll by IT services firm, Bluesource, three-fifths of IT executives across over 200 large UK organisations said their employees pose the biggest threat to GDPR compliance. As unfortunate as this finding is, it\u2019s not that surprising given how commonplace it\u2019s become for employees today to use multiple communications tools such as messaging apps, social media and more. And as our own research indicates, this isn\u2019t simply happening in employees\u2019 personal lives \u2013 it\u2019s happening in their work lives too. In fact, 53% of the surveyed frontline workers in our study said they use messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, for work-related communications up to six times daily. Meanwhile, 16% of the respondents admitted that their HR departments were unaware of such usage.<\/p>\n

The scenario I\u2019ve described poses numerous threats to organisations. For one, it makes it incredibly difficult for their HR departments to gain proper visibility into the technology and tools being used by employees to communicate with each other and share highly sensitive, even classified, information and documents. But if those unapproved tools, such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, aren\u2019t secure in themselves and have experienced data breaches in the past, it puts the organisation\u2019s data privacy and GDPR compliance status in serious limbo. This isn\u2019t something any organisation can afford to let happen, given the hefty fines of 4% of an organisation\u2019s annual turnover being imposed for violation of GDPR.<\/p>\n

This brings me to an important question \u2013 what can and should CIOs be doing to ensure that all employee data is processed and handled in a secure manner? Before I go any further, it\u2019s fair to say I appreciate internal communications does not fall under a CIO\u2019s remit \u2013 it\u2019s usually owned by HR, internal communications or marketing. However, CIOs are responsible for the digital infrastructure of a company that supports enterprise goals. Communication tools (be it email, employee communications platforms, HR technology and other technologies) comes under this and ultimately all departments want to see a healthy balance sheet. Disengaged employees will not enable this, as turnover is an expensive loss to accommodate.<\/p>\n

So now I come back to my earlier question. What can and should CIOs be doing to ensure that all employee data is processed and handled in a secure manner?<\/p>\n

Ask the right questions before implementing new technologies <\/strong><\/p>\n

As a CIO, it\u2019s important to ask the right questions when you\u2019re considering purchasing and implementing SaaS software or technologies that will be used by the employees across your organisation. If you don\u2019t ask the right questions, you could miss out on an important detail, such as the fact that a vendor you\u2019re considering suffered a massive data breach, which left its customers\u2019 data exposed and vulnerable.<\/p>\n

Some questions I would ask include:<\/p>\n