POPI Compliance Certificate

What is POPI?

The POPI Act seeks to regulate and govern the manner in which companies and other commercial entities source, process, store and share data, especially data relating to personal information. This can be personal information pertaining to staff and employees (HR data), personal information collected from data subjects (client/member data) and the personal information processed, stored or shared in terms of any third-party agreement (third party data or data-sharing). All entities must be able to show that its data collection and processing is lawful, and that any procedures/policies/agreements related thereto are in line with the provisions of POPI.

Personal information is any information which can be used to identify a data subject (person). This includes but is not limited to: ID numbers; Name and surname, email address, cell number etc.

If you “gather” any data from clients during the course of your business, then you have to comply with POPI. In short you must make sure the way you gather, store, manage and delete the information from your clients is legal.

• Create awareness within your company by making sure employees understand the basics of the POPI Act and what is required from them.
• Important self-assessment of your organisation to understand how personal data of your customers (and staff) is collected, used, stored and processed as well as destroyed.
• Create and implement the appropriate policies and procedures that manages the flow of information.
• Have a POPI professional or specialist review & audit your company policies and procedures to check if they are in line with the POPI Act.
• Policies and procedures need to be properly communicated via training that is provided throughout your company to create awareness and understanding.
• Plan or schedule frequent assessments and/or audits of the changes within your company to ensure you stay POPI compliant.

Due to the seriousness of privacy and each person’s constitutional right to Privacy, sanctions for non-compliance are significant. Failing to comply can cost you up to R10million in fines and/or some jail time.