Almost all B2B events and trade shows have the purpose of sharing contacts (or so they should be). And just as leveraging technology to capture contacts can help exhibitors feed their pipelines and drive a connected, buyer-driven strategy, event professionals must get more diligent about event data. After all, collected data are also a source of valuable insights for organizers to track their own impact. Let’s unravel how to ensure legal compliance when collecting event attendee data?
Why is data security important for your event?
According to Forbes, the past two years have seen a significant increase in virtual and hybrid events – roughly 1000% – which is a strong indicator that the risk of cyber security threats and incidents will also rise. And since lead capture tools mess with sensitive personal data, events are automatically related to data collecting, and so what they earn in profitability, they can easily lose with a little weakness. Remember, a single vulnerability is all that a cyber attack needs.
Also read: How lead capture tech can help you measure your event ROI?
Moreover, with phygital events integrating ever stronger digital tools, event data security isn’t something to be overlooked. Any data breach can put your reputation, revenue, and events at great risk. As such, cybersecurity coupled with the attendee experience and engagement should be your top priority.
Here are some elementary tips you can put in place to make sure your data collection process is GDPR compliant:
1. Review your GDPR practices
- Get active consent – with beamian, visitors have the opportunity to deliberately decide when and if they want to interact with exhibitors to digitally share their contact information (automatic opt-ins are already in the past);
- Make opting out easy – Giving consent at some point should be as easy as managing preferences or even withdrawing it;
- Advance information – If you plan to share attendee data with third parties, notify the attendees ahead of time and let them know who’ll have access to their data.
Want more information with blow-by-blow requirements and penalties for non-compliance? Get our GDPR checklist for events for free.
2. Enable multi-factor authentication
It’s true that we want to facilitate data sharing, not add additional steps to it. But some tools need to focus on increased security – for instance, a ticketing solution with a payment gateway. Whenever it makes sense, add another authentication method so that users don’t rely solely on their usernames and passwords.
3. Choose an event platform that ensures security compliance
One of the must-have event management software features is to operate in compliance with global or local data protection regulations. It’s not by chance that data processors like event platform providers or other technology vendors that register attendee data owned by the event organizer play a significant role in GDPR compliance.
4. Staff education
The GDPR consists of hundreds of pages, so you may need some help to get it into the company culture. Strengthen your team with a legal expert that can be tasked with enforcing the regulations of the GDPR, like a DPO (Data Protection Officer).
Leveraging event technology to generate leads
Contactless technology isn’t only useful to eliminate long queues at event check-ins, it also grants the ability to collect data from your event quickly and efficiently. In fact, in a matter of seconds! Get to know our contactless solutions for events and all its practical applications. And why is this GDPR compliant? Because it’s the visitors themselves who take action.
So event organizers have a key role in making sure that their events are turning a profit for exhibitors. This means understanding the purpose of the event, setting effective data touch points and, of course, collecting GDPR-compliant contacts from event interactions.
Still not fully enlightened about the impact of GDPR on your events? Land on our contents page for the application of the General Data Protection Regulation and find out if your events are ready for GDPR.
