Just a quick note today to brag about my company, SolarWinds, and their approach to GDPR.
I’m proud to work alongside a team that was able to rise to the challenges of GDPR compliance. I’ve seen companies try to ignore GDPR, pretending the rules won’t apply to them. I’ve seen other companies just shut down entirely rather than make an effort to comply.
As we inch closer to the 25th-May deadline SolarWinds has been publishing content for you to better understand GDPR. We have a landing page with some assets for you to download and share. Here’s a caption from my favorite one:
You can download this PDF by clicking here. Here’s the full list of materials available:
SolarWinds GDPR Readiness Plan
Unpacking the Language of GDPR
GDPR: A Guidebook
GDPR: Data Rules of the Road
These documents serve as a reminder the GDPR isn’t about sales, the exchanging of goods and services for money, or business in general. The GDPR is about the exchanging of data. And we exchange data in many different ways.
Summary
GDPR compliance may be hard, but nothing worthwhile is ever easy. To me, data security and privacy are worth the extra effort. Any person or company that mocks the GDPR sends a message they do not care about customer data privacy. If you don’t want to respect the rights of EU citizens, then you won’t respect the rights of anyone. I’m a believer in treating people the way you want to be treated. If I want people to respect my rights, I must respect theirs.
When it comes to good data privacy practices you need to follow a few simple rules:
1. Only collect the data that you need.
2. Don’t misuse that data in any way. Don’t add people to a second mailing list, or sell their data.
3. Know where you store their data so that you can remove it when asked.
As a data professional, the best message you can put out there is that you care about data privacy for your customers, no matter where they call home.
That’s the right message we want to send, everywhere, all the time.
