BHETA seminar advises members on GDPR legislation
BHETA’s November 21 forum was devoted to advising members about the EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which replaces the Data Protection Act (DPA) in May 2018.
The seminar speakers were James Howarth and Simon deMaid from solicitors, Howes Percival and their presentations included guidance on the following GDPR topics:
– Explanation and overview of personal data
– Introduction to GDPR and key legal concepts
– Demonstrating accountability (including technical and organisational measures, privacy notices, document retention and consent)
– Breach Notices and Subject Access Requests
– Implications to business to business data
– Implications to business to consumer data
– Implications to on-line trading
– Direct marketing
– Implications to data used for export
– Employee data
The new regulation stipulates that any data held by any organisation must be for a specific purpose and that confirmation of consent must be obtained from the data subject. This includes communication with customers, prospects, suppliers, staff, and service providers. The new act has much greater scope and much tougher punishments for both companies and individuals at those companies, should they fail to comply. 55 BHETA members attended the event and questions from the floor were very much encouraged.
Commenting on the event, Will Jones of BHETA said, “BHETA is leading by example in terms of contacting its own membership, but given the potential penalties for non-compliance, it is vital that all companies understand the new legal framework. It is equally important that they take steps now to address the GDPR requirements as doing so is not necessarily a quick process and in these challenging times, we must ensure that we are able to go about our normal business, confident that we comply with the law.
“Such is the importance of this subject that we are repeating this event late-January. This will enable us to include information on the regulation updates which are due for release by the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) in early January.”
For more information about BHETA and its programme of events for 2018, contact Member Services on 0121 237 1130.
Source: BHETA
December 2017