CREDITON Chamber of Commerce recently hosted an event at Crediton Football Club to give local businesses a clearer understanding of the forthcoming GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and cyber security.

Guest speakers at the event, which was open to members and non-members, were William Lines of Clyst Information Systems and Joe Powell from Graphic Plc who gave presentations to explain the provisions of the GDPR to help local businesses comply with the new requirement which comes into force on May 25, and to gain a better understanding of cyber security.

GDPR is a regulation in EU Law on data protection and privacy for all individuals within the European Union and aims to give people more control over how organisations use their data. Hefty penalties will be imposed for organisations that fail to comply with the rules, and for those that suffer data breaches.

In the UK GDPR will replace the Data Protection Act 1998, which was brought into law in the UK as a way to implement the 1995 EU Data Protection Directive.