After coming into effect in May 2018, GDPR, or General Data Protection Regulation, has been the most important decision in data privacy regulation in the Europe Union since 1995.

The decision comes with new changes that can have a major impact on businesses that rely on gathering and processing data, like a visitor management system. Thus, it becomes a legal obligation for you to make sure that your visitor management system is GDPR compliant.

Any business that provides its products and services in the EU, irrespective of where the data is being processed, is bound to follow the new regulation.  For non-compliance, you will be penalized up to €10 million, or 2% of the annual global turnover- whichever is higher.

So before getting into the nitty-gritty of the regulation, let’s understand the basics first.

What do we mean by GDPR compliance?

Users have a right to know how and why organizations are using their personal data. Thus, GDPR is a crucial step for protecting the personal data and privacy of the users.

Furthermore, we’ll get to the core features of GDPR. But if you need a more detailed understanding of the concept, you can check it over here.

Now, let’s explore the GDPR requirements for visitor management systems.

Core Principles of GDPR

The basic principles of GDPR for a visitor management system are as follows-

1. Before gathering the personal data, request your visitor’s consent.
2. Be clear about why and how your user’s personal data is to be used.
3. Other than the reason stated, you can’t use your visitor’s data for any other purpose.
4. Visitors have a full right to request for data deletion.
5. You need to guarantee the security of personal data against external threats.

These are the 5 core principles that need to be adhered to by all visitor management systems. Make sure that your new visitor management system (or the already existing one) complies with the above principles.

Now that you have a grip over the topic, let’s dive deeper into the key aspects of the GDPR compliance checklist for your visitor management system.

Key Aspects

1. Visitor Consent

The first and foremost aspect of GDPR is visitor consent. It is extremely important to take your visitor’s consent before gathering their personal data. Therefore, your visitor management system should allow the user to comprehend the privacy policy contract and opt-in process before submitting personal data.  For your Visitor Management System, it means you can have a mandatory check-in box and digital contract documents for your visitors.

2. Transparency

It is essential that you explain to your visitors the purpose of collecting their personal data. This step is crucial in order to gain the trust of your visitors. Hence, the interface of your Visitor Management Systems should be able to communicate important information with your visitors while signing in. It should also be able to provide additional documents for further information.

3. Clear Purpose

Your aim to gather the personal data of your visitors should be defined and only used for business purposes. For example, you cannot ask your visitors to provide their bank account details, birth date, or passport number without valid reasons. Therefore, the Visitor Management System must have a customizable form that allows you to define user inputs. In addition, it should also have a custom check-in process so that repeated information can be avoided.

4. Data Access

Since your visitors have the complete right to access the data stored in your Visitor Management System and also to delete it, you shouldn’t keep the information longer than the desired amount of time. Therefore, your Visitor Management System should have an automated process which deletes the data after a definite period.

5. Data Security

A visitor management system is like any other web system and therefore must have an efficient data security structure. It should be capable of protecting your data against theft, loss, destruction, or damage.

Conclusion

To summarize, the basic concept of GDPR is to ensure that your visitors’ data is secured and not misused. Thus, you should always make sure that digital solutions or any other technical system do not violate the rights of a visitor’s security and privacy.