In May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will replace the Data Protection Act 1998.

Designed to give us all far greater control over our personal data, it will fundamentally change the way businesses are expected to store and process information.

With just eight months to go, here’s what you need to start thinking about:

Employee education

Data will flow through your organisation in a variety of ways and come into contact with multiple departments.

It’s therefore vital that the entire workforce understands the best practices required to remain GDPR compliant.

This isn’t something that should only reside within the boardroom and dusty policy documents.

Further reading: GDPR  - Educating your employees on the security of data (INFOGRAPHIC)

Understand the fines

If you fail to keep personal data accurate, safe and only collect it for legitimate reasons, you could fall foul of the GDPR and risk penalties amounting to as much as €20 million or 4% of global turnover.

Review your basic printing procedures

Becoming and remaining GDPR compliant isn’t rocket science, and while it admittedly requires some relatively big changes, some are simple and should be in place already.

Ensure your basic printing security measures are adequate, from device whitelisting to encryption and central device management.

Further reading: 5 Basic Printing Security Measures (INFOGRAPHIC)

Conduct a risk assessment

There are plenty of common risks when it comes to printing, scanning and copying, and you should work now to identify them all.

Some are obvious (leaving confidential documents on the printer try), while others (complex digital processes that feature ‘digital gaps’) are harder to identify.

Further reading: 12 common risks of printing/scanning and copying

Get serious (and secure) about cloud storage

Life before cloud storage was a pain, but it’s immediacy and ever-present nature lends itself to inadvertent misuse.

You may be storing confidential customer data on the cloud, therefore it’s time to find it and make sure it’s stored in-line with the GDPR rules.

Further reading: 6 best practices for saving documents securely on the cloud

Assume you might have to deal with a data breach

Data breaches can happen at any time, no matter how big or small your business.

Once the GDPR comes into effect, the consequences for having a poor or non-existent data breach response are dire.

Create yours now.

Further reading: The 10-step plan for a watertight data breach response

Start preparing - today

May 2018 might feel like a long time away, but there are plenty of things you can do immediately to start preparing for the GDPR.

Don’t leave it too late. Elements of your business will need to fundamentally change in order to become compliant, and that isn’t something you can do overnight.

Further reading: 12 steps to take (now!) towards GDPR compliance