How POPIA Affects Your Business
The government is constantly putting out new laws and regulations, and many designed to protect the citizens of the country. That is the case with POPIA. However, laws such as this can lead to issues in the economic sector as companies are forced to conform to the law and reform parts of their business to ensure that they fall within acceptable parameters.
What is POPIA?
This is the first question that you may have when you come across this acronym. It stands for the Protection of Personal Information Act. It is also sometimes called the POPI Act, but we will refer to it as POPIA for convenience.
As the name suggests, POPIA is intended to protect the private data of South African citizens. The purpose of the act is to protect personal information so that said information cannot be used to steal money, assume someone’s identity, and so on. This law was put into place to protect the human rights of citizens and ensure that they are not easily manipulated by those who have access to their private information.
How Does POPIA Affect Companies?
POPIA does not really affect regular citizens at all. Or at least not in the sense that they need to do anything differently. Instead, the law’s effects are geared toward organisations that, in any way, have access to the personal information of citizens. Most smaller companies will not need to be concerned about this law as it will more commonly affect large corporations and governmental agencies.
As a larger economic organisation, you will need to comply with this law. That means that you need to have an Information Officer who ensures compliance, develop privacy protections for your employees while also explaining these protections to them, and rework contracts that do not explicitly conform to POPIA requirements. On top of that, you will need to disclose any possible data breaches linked to your organisation and never unlawfully transfer personal data.
What Are the Consequences of Not Complying with POPIA?
It would be best to comply with POPIA. The reason for this is quite a simple one: you can face fines and criminal prosecution. This law is aimed at protecting the private information of the citizens of South Africa, and as such, there are repercussions for not doing your due diligence and adhering to these policies.
The fines can run to exorbitant amounts that reach R10 million. This will obviously be based on the level of refusal to adhere to the law’s stipulations. However, fines are the least of your problems when it comes to POPIA non-compliance. You could also face potential prison time.
The prison terms, much like the fines, can vary widely in how they are enforced. It is possible to be presented with a ten-year prison sentence for POPIA non-compliance, but it does depend on each individual case. Either way, the loss of profits to a fine or real-world prison time are good incentives to comply with POPIA specifications.
How Can Accounting Instincts Assist You With POPIA Compliance?
Where does Accounting Instincts come into the picture? Well, in simple terms, we are more than happy to assist you with POPIA compliance. In essence, we can inspect your business to see how it can become POPIA compliant because no one wants to face future issues that do nothing but cause unnecessary problems to appear.
We do this by designing and implementing a sustainable strategy for your company that is fully POPIA compliant. If you need your company to be POPIA compliant, you can get in contact with us by sending us an email or giving us a call. We are always more than happy to extend a helping hand to help you make heads and tails of the latest in POPIA compliance requirements.