The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has released guidance to UK SMEs to help encourage better data protection practices. 

Ahead of Data Protection Day on January 28, the ICO is encouraging the UK’s 5.5 million SMEs to check that they uphold the right data protection practices to sustain and develop their businesses. 

The emphasis on data protection comes after a recent ICO survey found that 91% of people are worried about having information sold to other companies without their consent, and 87% worried about a company losing their personal information. 

As the UK contonues to develop its Data Protection law, which will officially split the country off from EU-wide GDPR, small businesses need to continually update their data protection practices to ensure they are abiding regulations. 

While the regulation itself is meant to protect people’s personal information properly and fairly, good data protection also makes economic sense by saving businesses time and money, and gaining consumer confidence. 

Paul Arnold, COO of the ICO emphasised this, commenting: “As we head into a new year, and a tough year for many small businesses, we want to help business owners work confidently and responsibly with the personal information they hold. 

“It can be an incredibly valuable asset when held and processed responsibly and can enable hard-working business owners to develop their business, whilst instilling a real sense of confidence in their customers.”

To help SME’s the ICO released seven top tips for beginners, as well as proviign free advice and guidance on its SME hub. 

1. Make a list. Companies should start off by making a list of the personal information they plan on collecting, as they will need to be able to account for all of it. 
2. Asking why. Addressing why companies need to collect or store certain personal data is important in keeping their policies fair as well as lawful. Assessing the balance of what companies want out of the data and the associated benefits with the risks this collection brings is a vital part of this. 
3. Security. Security measures should be in line with the sensitivity of the information companies hold. The more sensitive the information, the more stringent the security should be to protect it. 
4. Transparency. Companies need to ensure they inform consumers about their date policies: why they hold information, what they’ll do with it, and how long they’ll keep it. All of this information will need to be recorded in a privacy notice accessible to consumers. 
5. Subject Access Requests: Legally, people have the right to know what personal information a company holds about them. The ICO has a step-by-step guide for businesses to deal with a subject access request. 
6. Data Breaches. Data breaches are on the rise across all different types of businesses and organisations. Having an action plan is therefore essential to mitigate the damanging effets of a breach and garner consumer confidence. 
7. Check in to Keep Up. The ICO also recommends that businesses keep with regulation changes to make sure they keep in line with changing laws, which they can do by viewing the ICO’s regularly updated website. 

The ICO’s guidance comes as the regular is set to complete a pilot programme with up to 60 SMEs from across the UK, where they have been trialling a new training and development programme, SME Data Essentials. 

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Aimed at empowering organisations to become better equipped to manage their own data compliance, the programme forms part of the IOC’s new three-year strategic plan. 

Named ICO25, the plan details how the ICO will bring down the cost of data compliance while supporting and enabling SMEs to innovate and grow. 

Arnold said: “Data protection compliance is not a barrier to business success and the ICO is here to help. For example, we want to empower businesses and organisations to ensure their email marketing databases are working as hard as possible to reach the right customers, lawfully, every time.”

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