Outsourcing Your DPO: A Cost-Effective Solution to Staying GDPR Compliant

It's now more important than ever for organisations to ensure their compliance with data protection regulations. With that being said, hiring full-time data protection officers for maintaining compliance with the GDPR may not be an affordable solution for many organisations, especially small and medium-sized businesses that may not have the required resources or are currently in the earlier stages of growth.

For business owners who are looking for a cost-effective solution, in order to maintain their compliance with the various data protection regulations and safeguard their best interests, outsourcing can be one of the most suitable options. In this article, we will have a look at some of the main reasons why many businesses are going with outsourced DPO and find it a very cost-effective alternative to hiring a full-time data protection officer. But before we dive in, let's understand why there is a need to appoint a data protection officer for your business.

The need to appoint a data protection officer

If you are a public body, a business or an authority that processes personal data of your data subjects on a regular basis or operates on a large scale, it's required by law for you to build a data protection compliance framework for monitoring your data processing activities and protecting the personal data from bad actors.

With the rising number of data breaches in recent times, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is closely monitoring and scrutinising all types of organisations for ensuring their compliance with the data protection laws. Not maintaining compliance could result in heavy fines and other damages to the business.

Whether to appoint one of the staff members as your designated data protection officer or to contract out the role is a decision that's to be taken by your organisation. If you are looking for a cost-effective solution in this regard, outsourcing is the way to go.

What's meant by outsourcing the role of the data protection officer

When you outsource the role of data protection officer, you will be working with a data protection consultancy that will offer you access to their team of expert data protection advisors. By choosing to outsource over hiring full-time employees, your organisation can bring down the cost while ensuring better compliance.

Now that it's clear why you need a data protection officer for your business and what's meant by outsourcing the role, let's understand how outsourcing the position of data protection officer can save your business a significant amount of money.

Why Outsourcing your DPO role is a cost-effective solution to staying GDPR complaint

There are several ways through which outsourcing the DPO role can not only help your business save money and also safeguard your best interest in the long run.

Avoid having a full-time employee for the role

By outsourcing the DPO role, it's possible to avoid all the hassle and costs that come with recruiting a full-time employee. You will be paying your employee a full-time salary and it will be in addition to the benefits packages and ongoing training that your company may also need to provide. Most importantly, the job of a data protection officer doesn't justify a full-time role, since the job barely requires a few days a month of work for ongoing management and monitoring of the data protection processes. This is why it's ideal to go for outsourcing and pay only for the time and services that you actually need, nothing more and nothing less.

Recruiting an experienced data protection officer can be costly

The technical know-how and knowledge required to implement and monitor the framework required for GDPR compliance vary a lot, depending on the jurisdiction and the sector or industry in which the business is operating. It's ideal to have someone highly experienced in the role of data protection officer who knows about all the potential loopholes and nuances relevant to the nature of work and data processing involved. However, finding and recruiting such an employee can be a tedious task for your HR team and also a very costly one at that.

Access to a bigger team of data protection officers

Needless to say, not all organisations are in a position to hire an entire team of data protection officers. However, it may be required in case you are expanding your operations processing a large amount of personal data on a regular basis, or in the need of expert guidance to resolve any underlying compliance issues. When you choose to outsource the job to a consultancy that offers data protection services, you can have access to a larger team of data protection officers, with each of them bringing a host of experience and knowledge to the table, while also saving the resources required for hiring your own team.