The ICO has published a blog aimed at new start-up businesses, encouraging them to get their approaches to data privacy right and encouraging entrepreneurs to think about data protection as they make plans to launch new business ventures.
The ICO seeks to empower all organisations to use people’s information responsibly and confidently, and provides proactive guidance and practical tools to help organisations get it right. The ICO’s beginner’s guide to data protection contains eight easy steps to get new firms started on their data protection journey.
Making sure that there are appropriate measures and practices in place from the outset will give a small business a head start, and ensure it is compliant with data privacy laws whilst showing its customers, suppliers, and any others that they deal with, that they are a brand others can trust.
As well as hosting an array of informative videos on its e-learning site, specifically for small organisations, the ICO has also created a number of free tools to help make data protection simple and hassle free, including a privacy notice generator, a direct marketing advice generator, and bitesize ‘how to’ videos to provide firms with tips and advice on a wide range of data protection topics, and how to put them into practice.
Under the Data Protection (Charges and Information) Regulations, all organisations must pay the data protection fee, unless exempt. This fee funds the ICO’s work, which includes providing resources to help organisations handle and process personal information correctly and lawfully. To check if firms need to pay the fee they can use the ICO’s quick data protection fee self- assessment tool.