GDPR Compliance: Everything You Need to Know About the New Privacy Rule

Understanding GDPR

The European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a regulation on data protection and privacy, in which individuals can regularly grant permissions for using their personal information for a variety of purpose in exchange of ‘free’ services. This regulation was approved on 27 April 2016. After a transition period of two years, it will be legally applied from 25 May 2018. With this, people can control how organizations use their information, and those who fail to follow the rules and suffer data breaches would be heavily penalized.

Reason Behind Implementing GDPR

One of the key factors behind introducing GDPR is the EU’s wish to control the way people’s information is being used, mainly considering that various tech-giants provide their services for free, as long as users offer their data to these firms.

On the whole, the internet and the cloud lets organizations create a lot of methods for using users’ data, and GDPR aims to resolve this.

Another factor is that the EU wants to make organizations more clear over the legal environment that dictates the way they can behave. By making GDPR identical throughout member states, the EU thinks this will altogether save companies €2.3 billion each year. 

GDPR and Digital Health Apps Compliance

One of the businesses that strongly needs to comply with GDPR is the Digital Health industry. The reason being that each digital health app collects, stores, and shares health data, which is sensitive and an issue of criminal law responsibility according to GDPR.

Above all, non-protection or misuse of information can result in payment of high fines. By complying apps, you’ll be able to avoid those penalties, to work with big companies or health institutes and to increase in your product.

How to Build GDPR-compliant Apps?

Here are the 10 guidelines that you can follow if you want to implement an app that is compliant with GDPR and provides complete control of personal information to users:

1. Ensure Whether the App Actually Needs All the Requested Personal Information

Implementing the best possible privacy method can save personal data to an extent, such as name, date of birth, place of residence, etc. But in all cases it is not possible; some entities may need more information. In each case, management and developers must ensure which data is totally necessary.

2. Encrypt All the Information and Make Users Aware Of It

When an app is saving the personal information, the data must be encoded with strong and proper encryption algorithms. Inform users that their important personal data will be encrypted and hashed to avoid any kind of extraction and possible vulnerability in case of a data breach. Also, encrypt personal data from ‘contact us' forms and inform users about it.

3. For Data Portability, Consider OAUTH

Internet protocols such as OAUTH let users create accounts by just providing another account ensuring that no personal information except the authentication ID from some other service is stored.

4. Use Secure HTTPS Communications

Many businesses don’t use HTTPS for their websites as they don’t consider it important. But if the information is sent without making secure connections, it can be revealed through the internet. In addition, ensure the proper placement of SSL certificate and make sure it is not exposed to SSL-related vulnerabilities.

5. Confirm That Sessions and Cookies Are Destroyed After Logout

Keep your users informed that the app uses cookies and it should provide the options for users to accept or deny the cookies, and cookies must properly expire after the user logs out or is inactive.

6. Inform Users About the Logs That Save IP Addresses

Various apps use locations or IP addresses as a specification to control authorizations and authentications, and they log this information when someone tries to bypass the authentication control. Tell your users about this, also how long the logs will be saved in the system. Avoid including sensitive information like passwords in the logs.

7. Keep the Stored Logs Encrypted

Keep the logs containing user information in a safe place and keep users informed about what happens to these encrypted logs.

8. Inform Users About Third-party Data Sharing

If your organization is doing any third-party data sharing, whether they are external affiliates, plugins, or any government organization, include that fact in the terms and conditions.

9. Keep the Data Breaches Policy Clear

One of the key features of European law is the users’ right to be informed in case of any data breach. Always implement clear policies for your organization that confirm roles and steps to follow so that users can be instantly informed if a breach occurs.

10. Delete the User Data Once They Cancel Their Service

Many web apps don’t make it clear what happens to personal data once the user has deleted the account or canceled the service. Make sure that all the account information of users is deleted once they discontinue the service.

How Is GDPR Reshaping the Internet

Europe’s New Privacy Rule was passed two years back, but you can comply with this order until this May. The GDPR must have strong user consent from organizations that need data collection over the internet with a service or product. In addition to that, users should be given a way to reverse that consent and a way to request access to any collected information in order to verify given consent.

Violating this rule can result in huge penalties of $20 million or 4% of company’s turnover, whichever is the larger amount.

This post might have helped you get an idea of everything that you needed to know about GDPR compliance.

Contact Mobisoft Infotech’s healthcare team for more information on GDPR compliant healthcare app development.