Reasons why your website needs to be GDPR compliant
Policies and regulations are an important part of running any business venture since they serve as a guide to ensure that the company’s operations are in line with the best practices. Governments and policymakers are beginning to see the reasons why there is an expectation for an ideal business to be under some regulatory law; both for the sake of the business sector as a whole, and for the good of the clients or customers who would be making use of its products and services.
The business terrain in Cape Cod is a peculiar one due to the fact that most of the business outlets here provide services that leverage on the tourism potential of the area. This makes it important for the business owners to incorporate or adopt the features that give the visitors some confidence that their safety in all forms and by all standard is not compromised.
An aspect of security that anybody would consider important is personal information data. Any individual giving out their own information for the purpose of a transaction such as a restaurant and a hotel booking or car hire services, especially online, would normally want to do so with some assurance that information would not get out to the hands of a third party. Although this is important for most people, the visitors and tourists, particularly those from Europe, may tend to be more particular about it- especially with the newly enforced rules courtesy the European Union and parliament.
What then, are the rules and how do business operators using online payment and booking methods, ensure the protection of a user’s provided data?
This was the subject matter that brought about the ratification of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in April 2016. The regulation is an important safety measure that is binding on every business outfit that would ask for customers’ information at any time of a transaction process. It is thus, a necessity for the businessman or woman to understand the purpose of it, as well as put the actions in place.
What GDPR is all about
The GDPR was an issue of debate for four years before 2016 when it was finally ratified. The objectives of the regulation are to broaden user interest privacy protection when it comes to their personal information. This regulation, agreed upon in 2016, has taken effect starting from the 25th of May 2018. The two-year time frame before its adoption was to enable affected companies to carry out all the necessary preparations for the commencement of it. By this, the regulation stays binding on everyone residing in the EU zone, as well as companies and businesses that would be having any business dealing with citizens of the region. This is the part where it concerns a majority of the business concerns in Cape Cod.
To achieve its objective, the GDPR has an organized body that unifies all the segmented individual data privacy outfits to come under it as the bedrock standard reference. Thus it monitors the activities of the companies to see if they adhere to the policy regulations or not.
Privacy decisions requiring customer consents under the GDPR would include consent on storage of online identifiers such as the IP addresses and cookies. Up until the enforcement of the regulations, they did not significantly require the consent of the website users. In addition, customers are now entitled to know all of the reasons why a company or business would require their personal data, as a prerequisite for using their services. The advantages of the GDPR for customers and clients is that it helps them have reasonable control over their personal data. Companies are not allowed to go ahead to use the data without permission because they had already gotten the information. With these new rules, information previously obtained by business owners is subject to GDPR compliance.
How the GDPR effects your website?
Obviously, every business within the Cape Cod territory is not situated within the jurisdiction of the European Union soil, thus people in countries like the US may want to question the reasons why they are being made to obey the rules. This would have been valid if the businesses did not have anything to do whatsoever with the European citizens. According to the GDPR, after obtaining personal information from a citizen of an EU state, then the receiving company or business outfit becomes obligated to the requirements. This follows Article 3 (2) (a) of the EU and parliament GDPR which states thus (paraphrased):
If the controller or processor of the data, who is not based in the union, is targeting products or services to data subjects in the union.
Data subjects as used in the GDPR article refers to EU citizens who are the owners of the data collected by the companies.
Why your businesses should be GDPR compliant
Since the GDPR seems to have come to stay, there are a number of underlying advantages that accrue to businesses outside the EU, that complies. Some of these are an opportunity to spread business tentacles that target customers from the EU.
Making your business GDPR compliant would become mandatory as the months go by if you are not intending to restrict your business to only individuals within the non-EU states. Thus, asides the risks involved for non-compliant businesses, you also stand the chance of gaining more business grounds. Be sure to update your Cape Cod Website to be GDPR compliant.
Also, since the internet, especially social media, and other online marketing strategies have become very useful tools for marketing a business, a GDPR non-compliant business would not be able to pitch its business services to people from the EU visiting Cape Cod, or conducting business with them. So basically, the small business is missing out on sales by not being compliant.
