What Does DPO Stand For
The Data Protection Officer (DPO) is an organization security leadership role the GDPR requires as per law. However, DPOs must oversee the data protection strategy and its execution to ensure the GDPR requirements are meeting.
What Kind of Firms Require DPO Services?
GDPR is the brainchild of the European Council, European Commission, and European Parliament to strengthen and modernize data protection systems for EU citizens. Although, it requires the mandatory selection of a data protection officer at every enterprise that stores or processes personal information for EU citizens. These officers should be chosen for all municipal establishments, and where the primary activities of the processor or controller entail systematic and regular supervision of data subjects at a massive scale. And, also where the organization carries out big-scale processing of unique personal data categories, which includes religious beliefs, ethnicity, or race.
Besides, the GDPR lexicon states that a firm’s size doesn’t dictate the requirement for a DPO, but the scope and size of the handling data does. GDPR, unfortunately, doesn’t clearly define what they believe to be as “big scale” data handling. That said, there are four major factors that governing officers use to ascertain the need for a DPO.
The four factors are:
- Data items
- The Data subjects
- The Data retention period
- Geographical range of processing
Furthermore, the guidelines around the data handling scale aren’t well-defined. Most small firms would not have to get a DPO on-board unless their major focus is data storage or collection.
DPO Requirements and Responsibilities
As per Article 37 (GDPR), the DPO is mandatory for firms that collect or process personal data of EU citizens. Likewise, the DPOs have the responsibility of educating and training the organization on an array of topics, which include compliance.
