How Document Management Systems Can Help with GDPR Compliance

We’re living in an increasingly connected world in which digital data has become one of the most valuable commodities of all. With organizations routinely gathering vast amounts of personal information about their potential and existing clients, regulatory bodies are enforcing ever-stricter compliance laws and penalties for breaking them.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which comes into effect in the EU on May 25, is intended to guarantee the privacy of all European Union citizens. This also means it will apply to any companies in the US and other parts of the world that serve customers in the EU.

What Do You Need to Do to Become GDPR-Compliant?

GDPR legislation sets standards regarding data security and privacy. Any company that fails to comply could face fines of up to €20 million or a value worth up to 4% of their global sales. GDPR doesn’t just apply to personally identifiable information – it also applies to information commonly requested by websites, such as IP addresses and device and browser information. Processing data in line with GDPR legislation requires adhering to seven key principles:

• It must be collected transparently
• It must be collected for a legitimate and clearly defined purpose
• It must be relevant to its purpose
• It must be accurate and up to date
• It must not be stored for any longer than necessary
• Appropriate security protocols must be upheld at all times
• Controllers must be able to demonstrate their compliance efforts

How Can Document Management Help?

One of the core rules of GDPR legislation is that any personal data handled by your organization needs to be accessible on demand at any moment. In addition, the law states that you have a maximum of 72 hours to report a data breach, during which you’ll also need to be able to present proof of your compliance efforts and recovery and remediation plans.

Having a centralized location for storing all your business data is critical for enabling this degree of accessibility. Managing, auditing, and protecting your data is far easier with a document management system that’s governed by a logical structure in which everything is kept together. By contrast, a shared hard drive or public cloud storage system is typically unstructured, and lacking in version control and basic security protocols.

A document management system is critical not just for helping you meet compliance obligations, but also for streamlining access to information and improving efficiency across the board. At the same time, you’ll have the platform in place necessary to retain a complete line of sight into where your data is stored and who has access to it. The ability to capture, manage, and control access to the increasing multitude of records and other documents your business handles (both digital and printed) offers many key benefits:

• Fast document retrieval
• Reduced storage requirements
• Centralized security
• Greater workflow efficiency
• Better collaboration
• Robust disaster recovery

If you’re currently unable to quickly recover an important document or restrict access to confidential information as effectively as possible, then you’re not GDPR-compliant.

By using a document management system, such considerations are not a problem. Instead, you’ll be able to implement privacy by design, control access, and prove your compliance efforts. That’s a whole lot better than trying to manage increasingly large data sets by manual and decentralized means alone!

PairSoft helps you meet your compliance obligations while giving your business everything it needs to streamline its digital workflows. Contact us today to learn more about how our document management system can help your business grow while staying on the right side of the law.