Compliance with GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) has become a priority for companies. They must protect the personal data they collect and process on a daily basis. This requires rigorous processes and effective management to guarantee security and compliance with legal obligations. In this context, using GDPR compliance software is a valuable asset for centralising, automating and facilitating data protection tasks.
Even before choosing a tool, a GDPR compliance audit lets you pinpoint your gaps precisely and prioritise the actions to take.
What is GDPR compliance software?
GDPR compliance software is a specialised tool that helps companies comply with the requirements of GDPR.
It makes it possible to manage personal data, automate the administrative tasks related to data protection, and ensure rigorous monitoring of the processes in place.
With such software, controllers, DPOs and other stakeholders can centralise all information and procedures in a single, accessible and intuitive interface.
Why use GDPR compliance software?
Managing compliance in a manual way can pose many challenges and obstacles, in particular:
The high risk of non-compliance
Compliance with GDPR means following strict rules on the management of personal data.
Poor management or a lack of follow-up of users’ rights requests, such as the right to erasure or to rectification, can expose the company to fines of up to 20 million euros or 4% of worldwide annual turnover.
This risk is heightened by human error, scattered information and non-automated processes.
The Make IT Safe DPO software has modelling algorithms that make it possible, for example, to manage the status of each processing operation in detail or to create records for your processors. You can also define catalogues for your security measures or for the traceability of your data.
All these operations reduce the risk of GDPR non-compliance for your organisation’s data as far as possible and make steering them much easier.
The time and resources tied up
For DPOs, CISOs and other managers, collecting, organising and updating the data and the record of processing activities can take a considerable amount of time.
Employees have to spend long hours documenting each data processing operation, tracking consents, handling rights requests, and responding to audits by the supervisory authorities.
This ties up valuable internal resources that could be invested in more important strategic projects.
The complexity of compliance processes
Every organisation must keep a rigorous record of processing activities that details every action related to the processing of personal data.
This includes elements such as the origin of the data, the purposes of the processing, the people who have access to the information and the security measures in place. This record must be kept constantly up to date and ready to be presented during an audit.
Without a centralised tool, this can become a real headache, all the more so if the company has to manage large volumes of data or if it operates in several countries, with specific rules for each jurisdiction.
What are the benefits of GDPR compliance software?
Faced with these challenges, GDPR compliance software offers considerable benefits, by automating and simplifying the tasks related to the protection of personal data.
Automating administrative and legal processes
- Consent tracking: the software can record and keep track of the consents given by users, following the updates and changes made to these consents.
- Rights requests: when users exercise their rights (access, rectification, erasure of data, etc.), the software processes the requests automatically, sends notifications and keeps a record of all the actions carried out.
- Updating the record of processing activities: the software updates the record of processing activities in real time according to the changes made to data management processes. It can generate ready-to-use documents in the event of an audit or an inspection by the authorities.
Centralising critical information
All the information relating to compliance, including the data processed, the documents relating to impact assessments (DPIAs), evidence of compliance and audit results, is stored and organised within a single tool.
This gives DPOs and compliance managers a clear overall view and lets them react quickly when needed.
Real-time monitoring and automatic reporting
Compliance software makes it possible to monitor the company’s compliance status in real time. Thanks to dynamic dashboards, DPOs can visualise points of non-compliance and actions in progress, and generate automatic reports.
These reports are essential for proving compliance to the CNIL (the French data protection authority) or to supervisory authorities within the required time limits.
Improving data security
Besides automation, compliance software helps to strengthen the security of personal data.
By ensuring better traceability of actions, managing access to sensitive data and quickly detecting anomalies or potential breaches, it makes it possible to react quickly and avoid sanctions.
Saving time and reducing costs
By delegating repetitive and administrative tasks to the software, teams can focus on activities with higher added value, such as the optimisation of internal processes, the management of strategic risks or the development of new initiatives in terms of data protection.
In addition, the reduction of human error and of potential sanctions makes it possible to save time and valuable resources.
Easier audits
In the event of an inspection by the authorities, compliance software gives easy access to the reports, evidence of compliance and documents needed to prove that the company meets its legal obligations.
This greatly simplifies audits, while offering complete transparency on the company’s processes.
From the Make IT Safe software, you can assess your suppliers’ compliance directly by launching audits that can then be converted into corrective action plans.
This DPO tool will also let you audit your data processing operations in order to assess their GDPR compliance and automatically trigger a correction process for the processing operation concerned.
An excellent way to raise the quality level of your compliance processes.
The key features of GDPR compliance software
Centralising and tracking consents
The software records each consent given by users, thereby allowing the company to have complete traceability. In the event that users modify their preferences, these changes are taken into account and updated automatically.
Managing user requests
When a person wishes to exercise their rights (access, rectification, erasure, etc.), the software makes it easier to manage these requests by automating the processes. This guarantees that the deadlines imposed by GDPR are met.
Ensuring the traceability of actions
Every request or change of consent is documented, which allows companies to provide evidence of compliance in the event of an inspection or audit.
Detecting and notifying incidents automatically
The software continuously monitors data management processes and can quickly identify security breaches. In the event of an incident, a notification is sent to the DPOs and security managers so that they can take the necessary measures within the required time limits.
Managing action plans
Once a breach has been detected, the software helps coordinate corrective actions to close the gaps and secure the data concerned. It also tracks the measures taken to prevent the incident from happening again.
Producing documentation and reports
The software generates a detailed report on each incident, including the actions taken to resolve the problem. GDPR requires companies to notify data breaches to the competent authorities within 72 hours. This report is therefore essential to demonstrate to the authorities that the company acted quickly and effectively.
Assessing risks
The software automatically assesses the potential risks related to the different personal data processing operations. This includes factors such as the sensitivity of the data processed, the volumes of data, and the people who have access to it.
Carrying out impact assessments (DPIAs)
For high-risk data processing, GDPR requires a DPIA to be carried out. GDPR compliance software includes this feature and makes it possible to document every step of the process.
Tracking corrective actions
Once risks have been identified, the software makes it possible to put corrective actions in place and track their progress, thereby guaranteeing that potential gaps are dealt with proactively.
Creating action plans
The software makes it possible to define and organise the actions to be taken to achieve compliance objectives. These can include training teams, putting new security procedures in place or improving data management processes.
Tracking compliance actions in real time
The software offers an overview of the tasks in progress, the deadlines and the people responsible for each action. This makes it possible to ensure that all the necessary actions are completed on time.
Alerting and managing delays
If certain tasks are not completed on time, the software sends notifications to the people in charge, allowing them to react quickly and avoid any failure.
What criteria should you use to choose GDPR compliance software?
Not all companies have the same compliance needs, and choosing the right GDPR compliance software is essential to make sure it will meet the specific requirements of the organisation.
Here are the criteria to take into account to make the right choice.
Adaptability to the size of the company
The needs of a small or medium-sized enterprise are not the same as those of a large multinational. It is important to choose software that can grow with the company, adapting to the growing volumes of personal data processed and to new compliance requirements.
Usability and collaboration
The software must be simple and intuitive, so that teams can use it easily, even without particular technical skills. A clear, well-designed interface saves time and optimises the efficiency of the team in charge of compliance.
The GDPR software must enable collaboration between the different players in the company, to make it easier for information to be passed up to the DPO and to allow the DPO to then share it correctly with all the employees concerned.
Automation and reporting features
Automation is a key criterion for reducing manual tasks and minimising the risk of human error. Make sure the software offers features such as the automation of rights requests, the management of consents and the generation of compliance reports in real time.
These elements will make it easier for you to track the progress made and to react quickly if a problem arises.
Data security
Good GDPR compliance software must guarantee optimal protection of the personal data it processes. This includes putting in place robust security measures, such as data encryption, strict access controls and the traceability of the actions carried out.
It is recommended to favour data centres located within the European Union, and preferably in the same country as the one where the company holding the data is located. Servers must be equipped with security devices (for example, firewalls) capable of handling intrusion attempts.
Sensitive data must be stored in dedicated environments (no servers shared between several organisations). In the case of remote access, the administrators of this data must identify themselves through a strong authentication system.
Personal data can be processed by computer in such a way as to make any identification of the person impossible by any means whatsoever, and irreversibly so. This is a fairly costly process. Pseudonymisation is often preferred to it: a reversible process that replaces the data. It does not remove the identifying nature of the information used.
The administrators of these servers must offer contractual guarantees on the time taken to restore service and on the IT backup of the data for which they are responsible. The data must be encrypted and data exchange must take place via the TLS protocol.
Keeping pace with regulatory changes
Regulations on data protection are constantly evolving. It is therefore essential to choose certified software that provides regular updates to keep pace with new laws or guidelines, such as those of the CNIL or other supervisory authorities in Europe.
Choosing the Make IT Safe GDPR compliance software
GDPR software such as the one offered by Make IT Safe has many advantages, detailed earlier in this article: an intuitive administration interface, advanced collaborative features, a lower risk of non-compliance thanks to the classification of personal data, and more.
Our GDPR software is very comprehensive, but it remains a tool whose use must be accepted and mastered not only by the DPO, but also by all the company’s employees.
That is why Make IT Safe offers various webinars to help you understand all the constraints involved in GDPR compliance. To see how these criteria translate into the software, request a demonstration.
