From 25th May 2018, the new GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) rules regarding companies holding personal data will come into effect, and these new rules will effect companies of all sizes that hold data of any EU citizen, «personal data» being data stored on a computer or simply on paper!

So far, according to a survey conducted by the law firm Irwin Mitchell, only 30% of companies have prepared themselves for what is to come, meaning that many firms would probably go out of business if they received the maximum punishment of 4% of their annual turnover, limited to €20 million (£18 million), enforced by the ICO (the Information Commissioner’s Office).

Many companies remain blissfully ignorant and think the regulation doesn’t apply to them, as they don’t store information on a computer, or due to Brexit the rules won’t apply or they feel things are fine as they are.  They are probably wrong, as all companies store personal data, whether it be employee, marketing or customer information, and as these rules come in before the UK leaves the EU, it will be written into UK law as well.

What Is GDPR

• GDPR are rules companies have to abide to when they hold personal data or information of EU citizens.
• They give power to the people over their personal data and give them more rights, making companies more accountable.
• They also simplify the regulatory environment for international business by unifying the regulation within the EU, so even if you are outside the EU, it could still apply to you.
• The regulation covers how you must securely keep data, how it should be exported and what you must do if you have a data breach.
• With GDPR, a person must give you consent to hold their data, they have the right to demand changes to it and they have the right to order you to delete or destroy it.

What Can Happen

All companies must keep all personal data of their customers, employees, etc. safe. If any personal data held on an EU citizen is compromised, it must be reported to the ICO within 72 hours of the breach, otherwise the business or organisation will be fined upto €20 million. If they find that security of your data was lax or you held on to data that should have been deleted, you can be also fined, and even sued by the individual whose data you held onto.

What do I need to do?

Any business that processes or holds any personal data (online or on paper) should review how it handles that data, where it is stored, how safe it is, whether it is shared with third parties and whether it is actually needed.

A good first step is to carry out an impact assessment. This should focus on three main areas: how employees control and process the data; processes (how you obtain the data, where you store and send it); and reducing risk (ensuring you have adequate security and data encryption in place).

Under the GDPR you only have to notify the ICO of a breach where it is likely to result in a risk to the rights and freedoms of individuals. An example being a breach that is likely to have a significant detrimental effect on individuals. A list of first names might not be detrimental, but a list with dates of birth and/or contact details will be. The ICO provides the following guidelines to what might constitute a detrimental effect:

• result in discrimination,
• damage to reputation,
• financial loss,
• loss of confidentiality
• or any other significant economic or social disadvantage.

Again, it is vitally important that any breaches that may or do match any of the above points, must be reported to the ICO within 72 hours of the organisation becoming aware of it.

For example, employee data, such as assessments, do you need to keep them after they have left your employment?  If the employee hasn’t asked that you keep them, after a period of time, it would be wise to destroy or delete them. You must also grant the employee or ex-employee access to all data you hold on them so they can ensure that it is accurate and to raise any concerns on its validity or accuracy.

Exceptions

There are some exceptions to GDPR when it come to the right to be forgotten, for example if you decide to keep employee performance records for a period of time following their resignation, in case of a future legal claim against you, or there is an ongoing dispute where it is evidence.  However, you should be clear on what you will hold onto and make sure that it is destroyed when it is no longer needed.

Is My Equipment Rental Software Safe

If you are using software to store data and run your business, you must make sure that they store your data securely and that their login infrastructure is secure. If you do not use cloud software, you must make sure you have regular off-site backups, that the servers are in a locked and secure room (someone stealing a server or a hard drive is a data breach). You also need to perform regular virus checks on the server and all connected computers, make sure your firewall is setup, maintained and active, as well as a host of other requirements.  If you are using cloud software, then most of these requirements are alleviated and all you really need to worry about are login details not being kept secret, which is mitigated with MFA (see below).

What Personal Information is Covered Under GDPR

GDPR covers personal information about an individual being anything that can be used to identify them, such as their name, address, personal email address, identification number (such as passport number), location data (like tracking information from a phone), medical records etc.  What is not governed under GDPR is company information like a registration number, company address, a generic company email address (like accounts@email.com) or anonymous data about a person (this could even be medical data as long as the person it belongs to can’t be identified).

How Long Can I Hold Data According To GDPR

The time data can be held varies depending what the data is used for, and there is no set or specific time period set-out by GDPR.  The rule of thumb is that data should be erased a soon as it is not needed, kept for the shortest time possible, however there are many exceptions.

When it comes to business, you are required and/or allowed to keep the information for Tax, fraud, research, scientific, public interest and possible litigation reasons, etc.  You are also allowed to keep the data for reference reasons for your own internal use (you often need to reference old jobs to see what you supplied for example), however once the information becomes useless, you are required to only delete the information that identifies a person associated with the job. For example, with a hire company, you often have repeat business, sometimes over many years, and it may be necessary to see what you previously supplied them and for what price, so for this reason, you would be allowed to hold onto the data. If the customer vows never to use you again, after you have kept the data long enough to satisfy the tax authorities (at least 6 years after the end of the financial year according to HMRC) and the data is no longer needed for litigation, etc., you should erase their name, contact details and any correspondence from the job that can identify the customer.

What if I Hold Information for Marketing?

Not surprisingly, this is a little bit grey, but this is best we can make of it.  The collected information you hold is used and required by you for as long as you use it for marketing, therefore you are allowed to keep it, however the person has a right to unsubscribe from receiving marketing material from you.  If they have unsubscribed, the information that identifies them (like an email address) is not needed anymore, however some data, like how they responded to campaigns, is needed and you can keep it, as long as that data is anonymous (meaning you can’t identify the person it belongs to).

HireHop is Safe and GDPR Compliant

All data stored within the HireHop cloud software is stored on Amazon Web Services RDS and S3 servers (trusted by NASA, Netflix, UK Ministry of Justice, etc.).  All data stored by HireHop is encrypted behind firewalls, and is backed up on a daily basis, all protected by a multi-billion dollar security infrastructure in worldwide data centres. HireHop also adopts a two step login, and limits login attempt with timeouts to prevent hackers from mounting a brute force attack to assess passwords.  To help you with GDPR compliance, all passwords stored on HireHop are encrypted, HireHop allows the contacts in your address book to unsubscribe from mailing lists simply by clicking an optional unsubscribe link in emails you send them, and you can limit your users to only be able to login at certain locations.

One security weakness in many organisations is that staff tell each other their passwords, and when one staff member leaves, even though you may have disabled their account, they still might know another member of staff’s login details. To combat this HireHop now offer sign-in with Google and Microsoft, and with both of these you can enable MFA (Multi Factor Authentication). The advantage of this is that with MFA, the member of staff not only needs their password to login, but also their mobile phone needs to be at hand.

HireHop has also implemented a personal data erase feature, however as HireHop has only been released for 1½ years up to when this article was written, and all data held must be held for at least 6 years for tax reasons, the feature is currently not enabled so as to save our customers from making foolish mistakes.

 

To find out more, see the ICO’s 12 step guide at https://ico.org.uk/media/1624219/preparing-for-the-gdpr-12-steps.pdf.

Disclaimer: Nothing on this site constitutes legal advice. Specialist legal advice should be taken in relation to specific circumstances. The contents of this site are for general information purposes only.

Every hire and rental company suffers from customers returning items late, yet most software handles this in a haphazard way, usually by creating new jobs with the late returns, which can cause calculation errors, as well as a multitude of other problems.  Also some customers rent a bunch of items indefinitely (an open ended hire) and may return different items at different times, imagine how many jobs you would have to create for that scenario.

HireHop have made this process simple and intuitive, the way it should be.

If an item is late, HireHop will tell you how much is due and allow you to add at the press of a button all overdue charges. This enables you to make the informed decision as to whether or not you want to charge the client and by how much. All this is done from within one job without the headache of having to have multiple jobs just to handle one small hire. 

HireHop will tell you how many items on future jobs might be late, enabling you to judge whether or not you can supply that item or will have to substitute it or sub a replacement in to cover your commitment.

For jobs that are open ended (have no determined end date) HireHop, allows you to periodically issue multiple invoices (or one invoice) whenever you choose, as well as allow items to be returned over various dates. HireHop will seamlessly breakdown and tell you what you need to charge for and by how much, all at the press of a button and all within the same job.

At HireHop we want to give you software works around you and makes your life easier, not the other way round.

You have heard of the cloud and have been told how great it is, but why is that and what is the cloud?

More and more people today are moving to the cloud, many without even realising it, using the cloud for storage, banking, email and software, like Microsft Office 365. A survey by Right Scale found that 95% of organisations today are using the cloud in some way, many of them not even realising it.

What is the Cloud?

Traditionally we have stored all our files and managed our databases on servers or computers in our office or home.  The cloud is still made up of computers, known as servers, however they are constantly managed, maintained, backed-up and protected in data centres whose sole purpose is to ensure the security and reliable running of the servers.

Unlike many servers in the workplace, cloud servers are strongly protected from being attacked by hackers, using advanced firewalls, encryption as well as other security measures.  A firewall is in essence a «wall of fire» that stops a hacker getting past it. We all have basic software firewalls on our computers, however these are vulnerable from attack by things such as phishing, spyware and viruses. HireHop only uses the world’s largest cloud platform, Amazon’s AWS, which powers a huge proportion of the internet, from NASA, Netflix and banks such as Capital One, companies who supply important and vital services and who all trust and rely on the cloud.

«What if the Cloud Breaks?»

The only way the entire cloud could break, is if the World Wide Web broke, which would probably cause an «apocalypse» in people’s lives. To safeguard against any equipment or even power failure, some companies (like HireHop) who provide cloud services use multiple servers located in different parts of the world, meaning if a data centre in Europe catches fire, a data centre in America, with duplicate data, instantly takes over.

Another question that many people ask is «what if my internet goes down?».  If your internet supplier has a fault and you can’t access the internet, you always have your phone as a backup, you can even tether your phone to your computer or use a WiFi hotspot.

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Advantages of using the Cloud

As mentioned before, most of us use the cloud and don’t even know it, so what advantages are there in using the cloud over managing your own data on your own servers.

Cost Benefits Explained

The cost savings are the most obvious compared to running your own server and infrastructure at your workplace.

To properly maintain your own server you need to regularly do backups, security updates and generally maintain it, all taking time, and of course time costs money.  You also need the equipment and infrastructure (good quality servers and peripherals are not cheap), as well as the electricity and bandwidth.  By using the cloud you can share the running costs with thousands of other people, yet still have your own private and even more secure services only accessible by you.  Not only this, you are protected even further with the best servers and other equipment such as advanced firewalls and load balancers (things that all cost a fortune) for a tiny percentage of what they would cost you to buy.

Another cost advantage is a term you may have heard, being SaaS (Software as a Service). This is a subscription model where you don’t have to pay an extortionate upfront cost, instead you pay low affordable recurring monthly payments based on how many users actually need to use the system.  With SaaS like HireHop, you also get support included instead of having to pay an additional recurring support fee to the software company.

Any Device, Anywhere

Cloud software such as HireHop is accessible on any device such as a PC, Mac, phone, smart TV or tablet, as long as it has a web browser, allowing you to use and instantly access it anywhere in the world, enabling you to keep up to date wherever you are.  Gone are the days of telling clients «I will email you a new quote when I get back to the office», good cloud software like HireHop enables you to email a beautifully formatted quote, overlaid onto your company stationery from anywhere in the world on any device, enabling your client to get your quote instantly and ahead of your competitors.

Automatic and Hassle Free Updates and Bug Fixes

We have all experienced annoying updates and having to wait for them to install.  Old fashioned legacy software requires you to regularly install updates on every machine and server, always resulting in down time, and often having to reinstall when things go wrong.

Imagine if updates were just done without you even knowing or experiencing any interruption. This is another huge advantage of cloud software, updates just happen automatically with no inconvenience.

Occasionally your computer or iPad might break down.  Instead of having to install, setup and re-configure software on a new machine, with cloud software you just need go to a new machine and just log in with a web-browser, carrying on where you left off.

Increased and Efficient Collaboration

Cloud software allows you and your team to work in real-time, anywhere and at any time, allowing you to instantly see what they are doing or any changes they have made.

HireHop also allows you to further collaborate using other SaaS products, such as Google Docs or Microsoft Office 365, by integrating their documents, etc, into a job or project just by dragging and dropping the document’s web address, meaning everything you or your team needs is available on one system.

Security

As your data can be accessed on any machine, is it secure? The answer is yes, as long as you are using good cloud software like HireHop.

Any good cloud software like HireHop (just like your bank) use multiple security measures such as HTTPS and other forms of encryption and security.  When you change sensitive passwords or log in, you do so through a secure HTTPS (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure). This guarantees that your connection is secure and that the communications sent and received using your browser are verified and encrypted.  You access your online banking via the HTTPS using the cloud as well as your personal tax records, and these are secure due to this same level of security.

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The cloud market is rapidly expanding, with more and more companies (including your competitors) adopting the cloud due to its numerous advantages. No matter if you are a large or small company, you should be urgently looking for at cloud based software solutions.

Call us at HireHop so that our staff, who have extensive experience in the rental industry, can advise you and answer any questions you may have.