GDPR, liability and email security management in the digital age

On the 25th of May, 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was passed, bringing into law a number of privacy and data protection regulations for those within the EU. Any business that operated within the EU had to immediately begin to respect the regulations laid out by this law.

Yet, even businesses outside of the EU are impacted, due to the fact that anyone that does business with someone within the EU area still must fall under these regulations. This meant that the vast majority of international companies, stretching from Asia and South America to North America and beyond, all had to start abiding by these laws.

While GDPR comes into play in many distinct ways, one of the most common that businesses will stumble across is from within their email accounts. The personal data that all emails hold, including names, attachments, email addresses, and even conversations, are all protected under the GDPR.

Considering that email users send, on average, 122 work emails per day, every single business needs to pay attention to these regulations and abide by them. In this article, we’ll dive into GDPR and liability, demonstrating how businesses are keeping themselves safe.

What Are the Core Areas of GDPR That Impact Email Security and Management?

The GDPR is an extensive document, covering a range of articles, all of which apply to distinct parts of communication. From this selection, there are only a handful that directly relate to email. Yet, considering that not abiding by these could lead to a fine of €20 million, it’s worth knowing exactly how your business should prepare.

To tackle this, we’ll move through all the major areas that the GDPR covers, relating them to email practices for modern businesses:

• Email Retention and Management
• Email Marketing Practices
• Email Encryption and General Security

Let’s dive further into each of these, demonstrating what the GDPR states and how we can keep our businesses and customers safe with this in mind.

Email Retention and Management

Storing data is a complex point within the GDPR, as this is the vast majority of what the regulation sets forth to protect. Within emails, the personal data and communications that you have with consumers are protected under these laws. According to the GDPR, this means that you should only store data for a reasonable amount of time, as well as give users the option to delete personal data from your systems without any delay.

Of course, many businesses like to keep a record of communications. That’s why it's important to outline what you intend to do with a customer’s email within the email communication itself. Often, you’ll have to have a longer page of storage information on your site, while also including a disclaimed in your emails.

Most of the time, people use their email signature to house this disclaimer. By putting in a small paragraph and a link to your longer policy within this attachment, all of your emails will have the correct documentation that allows them to pass under GDPR.

Within this list of best email signature examples, you’ll be able to see how other businesses are currently managing disclosure paragraphs within their emails.

Email Marketing Practices and Regulations

Email marketing is still alive and well within the era of GDPR. Of course, this EU law did not set out to maim business communications, just shift them toward benefiting the consumer more than the business itself. While this change does, initially, seem fairly monumental, the regulation is actually fairly clear in what it sets out.

A person’s data, which in this case is their email address and potentially their name, is not something you can just start using at a whim. The GDPR outlines that in order to contact someone via email, you should always first seek consent. This means that you need to establish the terms of consent when someone signs up to your mailing list.

These regulations are why, before being able to then receive emails from a company, you have to agree to their email terms and conditions. One of these, that’s laid out by the GDPR, is that a user should be able to unsubscribe at any moment from this deal. That’s why it’s important to include the unsubscribe button within your email template.

Email Encryption and General Security

If an email is damaged, stolen, or lifted from a company account by a hacker, the business itself is held accountable for this mistake. That’s why so many businesses suffer enormously when they go through a security breach, as they’re taken advantage of by hackers and then have to deal with all of their GDPR violations.

This is why it’s so vital to make sure that every employee you give a business email account to understands how to protect your customers. One employee clicking on a phishing link or downloading malware onto your system could very well be the end of your company, especially if you’re a smaller business that’s only just getting started.

To avoid email liability, you need to make absolutely sure that you have a proper method of handling user data. This method should be understood across your entire operations, with both technical and organizational standards in place to ensure everyone is acting in a safe manner.

On the cybersecurity front, you can radically decrease the chance of a cyber event occurring by working with firewalls or additional email security companies. Equally, using multi-factor authentication on all of your business accounts will ensure that only your trained employees are able to get access to their accounts.

Final Thoughts

Email security is nothing to take likely. Both from a consumer perspective and a legal perspective, the rules and established customs that are in place make this a difficult field to navigate. While email is, at first glance, a very simple and to the point method of communication, its existence as a digital technology complicates the matter.

If you’re a business that communicates with its audience through email, then you should understand how the GDPR impacts you. Focus on the three core areas that we’ve outlined in this article and you’ll be able to systematically improve the quality of your emails in terms of compliance.

Although not the most exciting job out there, it’s always better to spend time focusing on sorting this out as early as possible. Otherwise, your business could face large fines down the line.

Image Credit: Symquest

Peter Davidson works as a senior business associate helping brands and start ups to make efficient business decisions and plan proper business strategies. He is a big gadget freak who loves to share his views on latest technologies and applications.