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If your business collects, handles or stores personal data, you must understand the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules. Breaching these rules may result in an investigation from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and, potentially, a financial penalty. This is a serious prospect, given that the ICO can impose fines of up to £17.5m on organisations in England for not complying with data protection rules. This article will explore valuable ways in which your company improve its data protection measures to avoid fines from the ICO.
Risk of Fines From the ICO?
The most common situations in which organisations in England receive GDPR fines from the ICO include:
- subjecting staff to intrusive and unreasonable monitoring at work;
- keeping personal information for an unreasonably long period (past when it is required);
- failing to report serious personal data breaches to the ICO within 72 hours;
- passing sensitive personal data to third parties without lawful reason or consent;
- suffering a cyber attack or data breach (which was preventable with proper safeguards); and
- failing to correctly and promptly handle Subject Access Requests.
The ICO acts as the referee for data protection matters in England and can issue your business a:
- yellow card, which is a written warning; or
- red card, which is a hefty financial penalty.
The ICO is transparent about providing companies with heavy fines as a deterrent against breaches of GDPR rules to other businesses. Accordingly, your business needs to implement best practices concerning handling personal information to avoid fines from the ICO.
The following section presents four tips for your business to avoid a fine from the ICO.
Implement Systems to Reduce Chance of Breaches
One of the best tips to avoid fines from the ICO is to show that your company prides itself on complying with data protection rules. You can do this by putting systems in place in your business to assist you with this. For example, you can:
- produce copies of written policies concerning good data practices;
- evidence regular staff training on data protection; and
- provide copies of data protection policies such as a Subject Access Request policy.
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Appoint a Data Protection Officer
A data protection officer (DPO) is primarily responsible for ensuring compliance with data protection principles. Therefore, appointing a DPO demonstrates that your business has taken every meaningful step to comply with data protection law which may help reduce the chance of a fine.
This is particularly likely if you face your first data protection offence, which is not a significant violation. A DPO should have the necessary skill and tact to communicate this to the ICO persuasively.
Maintain Prompt Communication With ICO During Investigations
Your company should take appropriate steps if the ICO starts an investigation to help avoid a potential fine. If your organisation receives an investigation notification email or letter from the ICO, you should promptly confirm receipt and provide any required information. As with the majority of organisations, they are more likely to treat your communication respectfully if you are courteous.
Key Takeaways
If your business fails to comply with its data protection obligations, the ICO will likely investigate and potentially issue a fine. As part of ensuring that you abide by data protection rules, there are additional ways you can try to avoid fines from the ICO. This article presents some of these, such as creating policies for good data protection practices and appointing a data protection officer.
If you need help with GDPR compliance and ICO investigations, our experienced data, privacy and IT lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents. Call us today on 0808 196 8584 or visit our membership page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. However, this usually requires your company to be able to demonstrate that the violation was unintentional, minor and unlikely to happen again.
You can try to avoid a fine from the ICO, such as by promptly communicating with them if they begin to investigate your business for a potential breach of data protection rules.
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