You should treat the health of your organisation like you would treat your own health. Doctors often say that “early detection saves lives”. Now apply that quote to your organisation. Imagine the value of doing a data protection health check on your organisation to remain data protection fit.
Prevention is better than cure.
We offer a health check that officers can take from time to time (we recommend it annually) to check whether their organisation has an effective data protection programme. How healthy are you? What if an authority or regulator came knocking to do an assessment on your organisation or visit your offices?
It is not a gap analysis, audit or review – you should be using software to do that on an ongoing basis. The health check does not check whether the organisation is currently lawfully processing personal data in all its activities and has all the necessary controls in place. The health check is an unscientific checkup. It includes interaction with a subject matter expert. We will give you a balanced view – the idea is not to scare you. This health check enables you to get an independent view. We help many clients and can help you to get an idea of how your organisation compares to others. In a way, it is a maturity and benchmarking exercise.
Now that data protection laws (like POPIA) have been in force for some time, as an organisation you’ve invested time and money to comply. We want to ensure that your organisation is or remains data protection fit by helping you to detect shortcomings in your organisation’s data protection efforts (through its programme) before they can have negative consequences for your organisation.
Organisations have done lots of work to protect data over the years. But data protection is a journey and not a destination. You are never finished and you can always be better. Our health check will help you to check how healthy your organisation is.
- Do you have the important controls in place?
- Do you have a strong foundation to help your organisation make continuous improvements?
- Does your organisation’s compliance programme have all the essential elements?
- What are the latest developments that impact your organisation?
- What should you focus on over the next 12 months?
Take the data protection health check
We’ve done this by devising a simple three-step process.
- Discover. We gather information and research your organisation, including asking you to complete some online questionnaires.
- Workshop. We set up a time with nominated members within your organisation (for example, accountable executive and information officers) and one of our specialists asks you to answer a questionnaire (about 20 questions) in real time and discuss it. This can be for up to two hours and is done online (unless we agree to do it in person).
- Document. We document our findings and recommendations by drafting a short health check report of about two to four pages. We deliver it and book another session with you to discuss the report.
The process will take you about two hours. It takes us a lot longer. We typically make between five and 25 recommendations. Some are quick wins and others are significant pieces of work (like implementing privacy management software).
If you pass the health check and meet a few other requirements, Michalsons will issue you with a data protection champ badge.
It will give you direction for your data protection journey for the year ahead.
For programme members
The data protection health check is available to members of the Michalsons data protection programme at no additional charge – it is included in their monthly subscription, but is only available for free once they have been members for a full year. Contact the support desk to arrange it.
Not a member of the Michalsons programme? Our programmes offer practical tips and insights to members to help them apply data protection principles in their organisations. There are many benefits to joining our data protection programme.
We do the health check for non-members too for a fee
If you’re not a member of our programme, we can conduct a health check on you but we charge a fee. Contact the support desk to get a quote.