One of the greatest challenges faced by many organisations is that they do not know what personal data they hold and/or how they treat it. This can be for a number of reasons including because the business has grown organically and, as it has grown, the types of information it collects and how they handle it has changed. If an organization doesn’t understand what information it processes and why it is processing it, how can it possibly understand whether or not it is handling it in accordance with relevant laws and/or where the risks lie?

The first stage in any compliance programme is to get an understanding of the data landscape in the business. Merrion Data Consultants works with many organisations to get an understanding of their business, to identify what information it holds, how it handles it and what purposes it uses it for.  As part of our audit or health check, we would gather this information, assess it and produce a detailed report of our findings which will identify areas of non-compliance, assess the associated risks and make recommendations as to how those non-compliances can be addressed.