It’s Time to Purge your Data this #Halloween

• by Olivia Lawlor-Blackburn
• General

While we do not recommend you ‘purge’ your data only once a year, we do recommend you continuously free your systems of data that is no longer fit for purpose.

Your organisation will hold masses of data and hopefully, you are already aware that you only retain and keep what is needed. Customer information, employee data, operational information, and intellectual property are all data that you may hold within your organisation, each having its own data management policy and you need to know it all.

Simple steps to ‘Purge’ your data this Halloween;

1. Know your data – Your organisation needs to understand the value of the data you hold in order to develop an effective data management system.
2. Understand your compliance needs – if you choose to outsource your data management, make sure that the company has the correct credentials to do so and is compliant.
3. Take stock of what you have – Regular reviews of your data will highlight things that are due for safe disposal.
4. Determine the data retention policy – The type of data will depend on how long you need to keep it for, ensure those responsible know the time frame that is suitable for all your data. Some data may need to be retained for years, other data for only a few days.
5. Allow access to the data, where suitable – Protecting data to the point where it is inaccessible to those who need it, is counterproductive.
6. Have a recovery plan – If the worst happens, you need to know how to recover from the incident. Regularly backing up your files will ensure you always have a copy if needed. You need to determine within your organisation how often these back-ups need to be done, in some cases, they may be daily.

Services we can offer to help you manage your data;

Data Protection Services – Here

• Writing, reviewing, and updating of Data Protection Policy
• Data Protection Awareness Training ( All Staff)
• Privacy Impact Assessment
• Data Compliance Checks and Audits against the Act
• Data protection of Physical Records
• Cyber Attack Crisis Management
• Support in Data Breach Crisis Management
• Various Police Training Courses, for all levels
• Various Public Sector Training Courses, for all levels

We don’t believe in doing consultancy to you – we believe in working with you. That’s why our services are bespoke to your specific business needs and drivers and are therefore sustainable and scalable to meet business change.