ONE of the hottest topics among the business community right now is the EU’s new general data protection regulations, more commonly shortened to GDPR.

The reason for their growing importance is the impending arrival of new legislation which could bring fines of up to €20m for companies which fail to comply.

To help businesses stay on the straight and narrow a free seminar is being held at Worcester Sixways on Wednesday, October 18, which will simplify GDPR and show organisations the practical steps they can take to become compliant with the new regulations.

GDPR will bring data protection legislation up-to-date with the way data is used and stored and becomes law from Friday, May 25 next year. There will be heavy fines for non-compliance of up to €20m, or four per cent of global annual turnover.

Adam Flynn, marketing manager of West Midlands technology provider and seminar organiser EBC Group, explained: “While many businesses are now at least aware of GDPR, far less have a plan as to how they will tackle the new law for either their existing data or an ongoing basis. With the deadline for compliance looming the time to act is now.”

The ECB event aims to simplify the process of auditing and managing personal data organisations must undertake in order to stay GDPR compliant. The seminar will be held in combination with speakers from leading enterprise content management system M-Files and also from FileFacets a provider of compliance analytics software. It will also feature guest speaker Reynold Leming, the conference director for the Information and Records Management Society.

Mr Flynn added: “During the seminar delegates will be shown the practical steps to auditing and managing personal data that an organisation should take in order to stay compliant with GDPR regulations.

"Plus the powerful tools that can be used by an organisation to easily audit, manage and control data on an ongoing basis.”