GDPR kicked-in on May 25, 2018. The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) demonstrates an important step to understand and maintain the security of citizens’ personal data. However, GDPR also carries an inconvenience for unprepared property managers. 

Broadly speaking, personal data is any information related to an identifiable and identified individual. From the person’s name to contact, to date and time, to the energy level, a personal data everything.

Nevertheless, if you are a property manager, here are the seven key points to keep in mind when preparing for GDPR:

Take the lead in everything

GDPR can affect your agency in many ways, so as a senior manager, take the charge of everything. Teach your team the urgency of everything. Let them know the importance of adhering to new data rules (if any changes). Keep an eye on the company’s rules and regulations, and make sure that everyone abides by it.

Transparency

GDPR is all about transparency, so if the property managers know this, they will be able to cope with GDPR with ease. Make sure you are completely transparent about how, why and when you are collecting personal information. Although the personal information is not off-limits, you should ask permission before using it.

Security

Simply securing file transfers, API calls or other data transfers is not enough. While you will be up-to-date from the data breaches and other securities, with GDPR, you should have all necessary things to ensure notification, detection, analysis and recovery related to the property. You should have strong security and monitoring devices to ensure data security.

Also, make sure that you have a secure website, which means if a renter needs any property related alerts, your website will allow them to use everything with security.

Keep an eye on suppliers and partners

Your partners and suppliers should be GDPR compliant too! When it comes to offering secure access to your customer’s personal information, you are the only controller. However, if you outsource or ask your suppliers or property managers to have a cloud-based CRM, chances of data breaching will increase.

Further, property managers, who are working on the desktop for things like workflow management or accounting, should upgrade to a new platform that should comply with new rules.

A breach-response plan 

If you ever become the victim of data breach that includes missing of any private information of your customers, make sure you are ready with another plan to secure it. Notify the IT authority within 72 hours, so that they come into action to resolve the problem. Do not delay and process everything on time.

Paper documents should not be ignored

Though the GDPR focus primarily on digital records, you should not ignore the impact it can have on filed documents. One of the important principles of GDPR is the ‘right to be forgotten.’ It means that an individual can request the removal of all personal information that the organisation might have if it is no longer relevant for them.

Make GDPR a responsibility

Not only the legal or IT teams has to worry about the GDPR, but every single person in the organisation should also consider GDPR as responsibility.

So, those were some of the tips an effective property manager should know before preparing for GDPR.

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