Data Protection Officers are a valuable part of any organization, but it can sometimes be tough to justify establishing one in-house. Even if it is not as a full-time role, it can still take some work to get a capable data protection officer trained and integrated with the rest of your business.
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However, outsourcing can also come with its own problems – a lack of control, less predictability, and more complications along the way. Should a UK business keep DPO services in-house or outsource everything to a third party? There is not always an easy answer.
Cost
Like most services and tools, outsourcing your data protection services makes them much cheaper and ensures that you can stay within your budgetary limits, especially as a smaller company. The cost of outsourcing data protection is far lower than hiring and training your own data protection officer.
Thanks to this, you can get the same level of data protection that you could have achieved yourself while also paying a fraction of the cost. Even if you could afford to set up your own DPO team or specialist, it is often still a good idea to outsource just to save that money for something else.
Productivity
If you only have so many employees at your business, then dedicating one to data protection services means taking them away from another role. If you outsource, then you can keep that employee working on something that is much more important to your business, like advertising or customer service roles.
One of the hardest parts of running any business is being able to put the right people in the right positions. If you are not in any state to expand and take on new employees, then you need to prioritize important roles, and DPO does not usually fall under a high priority for a new business.
Pulling people into DPO roles also comes with the risk that they might not be prepared or experienced enough to handle it. If they are not able to provide proper data protection services, then you might have no choice but to outsource anyway, and forcing them into the role will just delay things further.
Data Safety
In some cases, the risks of not having DPO services can be much worse than the downsides of outsourcing it, which can sometimes be your only option as a smaller company. Even if you have reservations about outsourcing anything, you should still make sure that you do not fall behind.
Data safety is important, and there are many situations where having DPO services in some capacity can protect your business from further problems. If you do not have any kind of data protection options, then these situations can just get worse and worse until you are able to fix them.
If outsourcing is the best way forward and the only option that you can rely on, then do it. The longer you wait, the more problems you might encounter, so getting a good grip on your data protection services is an important part of keeping your business stable.