How can Autoaddress help with GDPR compliance?
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) significantly increases the obligations and responsibilities of organizations and businesses in how they collect, use, and protect personal data. At the center of the new law is the requirement for organizations and businesses to be fully transparent about how they are using and safeguarding personal data, and to be able to demonstrate accountability for their data processing activities.
Anonymising your data
Organizations must be cognizant of the implications of a data breach which could result in a person’s name, address, and other personal details (date of birth, account number, or IP address) being made publicly available. Autoaddress can use address information to anonymize your data by matching it to the Eircode Address Database and assigning a Small Area code to your data that links to Census 2016 data for advanced analytics. Irreversibly and effectively anonymized data is not “personal data” and the data protection principles do not have to be complied with in respect of such data.
If the source data is not deleted at the same time that the anonymized data is prepared, the anonymized data will still be considered “personal data”, subject to the Data Protection Acts, where the source data could be used to identify an individual from the anonymized data. Anonymizing data can still play a significant role as part of a risk minimization strategy when sharing data with data processors or other data controllers.
What is anonymisation?
"Anonymisation" of data means processing it with the aim of irreversibly preventing the identification of the individual to whom it relates. Data can be considered anonymized when it does not allow identification of the individuals to whom it relates, and it is not possible that any individual could be identified from the data by any further processing of that data or by processing it together with other information which is available or likely to be available.
What personal information do you hold in your database?
Address fields can contain personal information, such as Names or mobile phone numbers. Autoaddress matches addresses to the Eircode Address Database and can flag if non-address information is contained in address fields.