A Guide to Implementing a sustainable data protection culture in your start-up

In today's fast-paced world, data has become the driving force behind societal and global advancements. It fuels innovation, saves lives, and generates substantial profits for businesses. However, working with data, particularly personal data, comes with risks. Start-up founders often get caught up in the excitement of building great products and overlook the need for privacy and data protection policies. Neglecting proper data protection measures can have severe consequences, as evidenced by high-profile cases like the recent €1.2bn fine imposed on Meta by the EU for privacy violations, which makes it one of the biggest data breach penalties of our time. Also, in 2021, Meta was fined $276 million for a data leak that exposed phone numbers, locations and other personal information.

TikTok and Soko loan a Nigerian credit facility also paid huge fines and faced threats of criminal liability. Therefore, implementing data protection measures is crucial to avoiding these scenarios.

Here are some tips to help you achieve privacy compliance:

1. Know the Relevant Laws: Familiarise yourself with the data privacy laws applicable to your start-up and its users. In addition to local laws, you should also be aware of international laws such as the GDPR and CCPA.

2. Develop a Privacy Policy: A privacy policy describes how an organisation handles information gathered for its operation. Create a privacy policy that clearly explains how your start-up collects, uses, stores, and shares personal data. Your policy should be easy to understand and readily accessible to your users.

3. Conduct a Privacy Impact Assessment: a privacy impact assessment is an analysis of how personal data is handled to ensure compliance with appropriate regulations, determine the privacy risks associated with information systems or activities, and evaluate ways to reduce the privacy risks. This is a requirement for companies that handle personal data and failure to do so exposes your company to data breaches and ultimately fines.

4. Implement an Efficient System for Carrying out Privacy Checks: a comprehensive privacy and data security plan is the single most effective measure that companies can employ to mitigate the costs of remediating a data breach. The data security plan should contain a strategy for evaluating and handling the risk associated with data privacy breaches and designing solutions to the risks.

5. Obtaining Consent: start-ups like other organisations are required to obtain consent from a data subject in other to process their data. This can be done using a data consent form. Consent is obtained through clear, unambiguous data privacy policies and without undue influence, fraud, and coercion. Consent should be even expressly and cannot be implied.

6. Handling Third-party Data: when handling personal data that will be shared with a third party, it is important to have a privacy policy in place that provides a closed chain of protection from the vendors to the end users.

7. Educate and Train Employees: Educated all employees about their roles and responsibilities in safeguarding data. Cover topics such as data handling procedures, secure communication practices, and incident reporting protocols.

8. Engage with Data Protection Experts: Consider seeking advice from data protection experts or consultants who can provide guidance tailored to your start-up's specific needs. They can assist in developing comprehensive data protection strategies and ensuring compliance with relevant regulations.

Some Benefits of Having an Effective Privacy Policy

1. Being transparent about the ways personal data is used and protected builds trust with customers and in turn, drives growth in your start-up.

2. Customers will feel more comfortable sharing their data with you and this can be a great way to grow and market your business organically.

3. Having a strong privacy policy will save the stress and cost of legal battles and penalty fines that come with privacy breaches.

4. Most third parties will require you to have a privacy policy before doing business with you to ensure that they are also protected.

5. Prevents unnecessary risks and generally promotes business growth and drives profit.

Start-ups are advised to inculcate the best practices for data protection in their organisation. This includes but is not limited to controlling access to sensitive data, creating a data usage policy and using data encryption. Organisations have to clearly outline their data policies and introduce them into the company’s culture. They have to train their employees on how to manage data in order to comply with safety guidelines. There are huge risks for organisations that do not take data protection seriously from the foundational periods of setting up the company. If information such as financial data, healthcare information, and other personal consumer or user data fall into the wrong hands, it can create a dangerous situation. By safeguarding data, start-ups can unlock growth, trust, and long-term success. Consulting with a knowledgeable lawyer is highly recommended to determine the approach that best aligns with your specific business.