GDPR Art.24: Responsibility of the Controller

Put a governance structure in place with clear accountability. Data protection needs a senior owner - someone at board or executive level who is responsible for it. Designate a DPO or data protection lead, and define who does what across departments. Make data protection part of business decision-making, not something that gets tacked on after the fact. Run a proper risk assessment of your processing activities. Evaluate each activity against the nature, scope, context, and purposes criteria, and assess the risks to individuals. Use a consistent methodology that accounts for both likelihood and severity of potential harm. Document everything and use the results to prioritise where you invest your compliance effort. Choose technical measures that match the risks you've identified. Encryption, pseudonymisation, access controls, data loss prevention, backup and recovery, monitoring and logging, secure development practices - pick what's appropriate based on your specific risk profile and what's realistically available. Don't gold-plate low-risk processing, but don't cut corners on high-risk activities either. Embed data protection into how the organisation actually operates. Write and enforce clear policies and procedures. Run training and awareness programmes. Establish incident response and breach notification processes. Conduct regular compliance audits. Maintain your Records of Processing Activities. These aren't just box-ticking exercises - they're what regulators will ask to see. Build a continuous improvement cycle. Schedule regular reviews of your risk assessments, policies, and technical controls. Watch for changes that might require updates - new processing activities, shifts in the threat landscape, fresh regulatory guidance. Keep an audit trail of what you reviewed, what you found, and what you did about it. Report compliance status to senior management regularly so it stays on the agenda.