With only three months to go to the deadline, just 8% of small firms have completed their preparations for the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), according to research by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), which is launching an awareness raising campaign
The FSB says a third (33%) of small businesses have not yet started preparing for GDPR while a further third (35%) are only in the early stages. The new regulations come into force on 25 May.
Small businesses in the financial services sector are the most prepared with 82% of respondents having started or completed their GDPR preparations. In comparison, over half of hospitality and arts and entertainment firms have not yet started preparing for the changes.
Mike Cherry, FSB national chairman, said: ‘The GDPR is the biggest shake-up in data protection to date and many small businesses will be concerned that the changes will be too much to handle. It’s clear that a large part of the small business community is still unaware of the steps that they need to take to comply and may be left playing catch-up.’
In light of its findings, FSB is launching a GDPR awareness raising campaign, dubbed ‘BeDataReady’, which runs 26 February to 2 March.
Elizabeth Denham, UK information commissioner, said: ’We know that many small businesses are keen to get it right, but with so much misinformation out there it’s difficult for them to know what’s right and what’s not. It is therefore very welcome that FSB is running this campaign.’
Data Ready: Mitigating the impact of data protection regulation on small businesses is here.
Report by Pat Sweet
