Tag: event apps

9 Reasons Why Your Attendees Did NOT Use Your Event App

Posted on by Eventsforce

untitled-design-66The popularity around event apps has evolved so much over the last few years.  Most people attending any kind of event these days expect an app and it seems most event planners want one too.  In fact, a recent poll by Eventsforce found that 80% of event planners found apps a great investment for promoting engagement around their events and will continue to use them. But while many conferences, tradeshows and festivals have managed to make their events bigger, better and more profitable with the help of apps, many have also struggled to get traction.

What determines the success of an event app isn’t just about how many people signed up for it and used all the different features but more importantly, how much they used it.  It’s all well and good having a 90% adoption rate for your app but if your attendees or ticket holders are not using it as much as you hoped, where is the return on investment?

Have a look at the most common reasons why your event apps may not be performing well:

Untitled design (28)Forgetting About ‘Laptop Time’

The apps that do well are those that aren’t just available on smart phones and tablets, but are also supported in the desktop environment too. We found that many attendees prefer managing important pre-event tasks – such as personalising agendas or building profiles – on a laptop. It’s much easier uploading images and content and it’s a lot more comfortable to search for things using a big screen web browser than one on a cramped phone. Being able to get your audiences to engage with your app on a laptop before an event also improves the perceived value for your app at the event.

Poor Promotion 

It may be hard to believe but one of the most common reasons why apps don’t do well is because event planners don’t communicate the value of the app as much as they should. You need to focus on branding the app experience as an extension of your attendee’s live experience at your event. Promote the personalised, digital-only content, as well as all the interactive tools it provides. And do this at every step of your event process – starting from registration and confirmation emails to reminders, updates, site signage, sessions and keynote presentations.

Lack of Valuable Content

Just as a successful conference needs content rich sessions, a successful app needs to offer attendees with valuable content. The app should bring ‘live content’, such as changes to schedules and notifications, as well as give attendees the ability to participate in Q&As or live polls. They should be the source of all digital content – so things like presentations, handouts and exhibitor collateral that people can’t get anywhere else. And finally, apps should be the hub of all user-generated content such as discussions and debates on social media.

Personalisation Pic_BlogNot Making It Personal

The goal of an event app, simply, should be to dull the noise at an event and point people to the connections, content and solutions that are right for them.  If you’re not doing that then your attendees will not end up using your app the way you expected them to. Here are some of the most popular ways an app can help personalise your attendee’s experience:

  • Reviewing recommended sessions, people and exhibitors
  • Being able to personalise schedule of sessions and events
  • Creating a library of presentations and exhibitor collateral
  • Managing a one-to-one meeting schedule
  • Building a ‘favourites’ list of solutions or exhibitors
  • Not pushing irrelevant content and promotions!

Complicated Log-In Process

When your attendees find it difficult to access or sign up to your app, then they won’t use it.  Having a smooth, hassle-free login process is key to success but security is also a concern so you can’t forget about passwords. Focus on getting people to sign up to your app prior to the event so that they don’t have to do it at the event when they have other things on their mind.  Know your audience and choose an authentication method that feels familiar, such as social sign-ins via Facebook or LinkedIn or giving them the option to create a new password.  You can also provide a way to recover lost passwords on other devices.

Bad Design

So many events fall victim to an app that look great but are difficult for their attendees to use. Your apps need to have an intuitive design – the more clicks it takes for your attendee to find what they need, the more likely you’ll lose them. The easier it is to navigate, the higher your adoption rates.  Look at popular apps for guidance, including Facebook, iTunes and Google Maps.  These apps provide users an experience that works – and more importantly, they have set your attendee’s expectations for how apps SHOULD work. They will not want to learn a new app interface for every event, so use well-established best practices for icons, menu design and layout and this should put you in a good position.

Having Other Competing Tech

The most successful event apps stand at the heart of everything your attendees do at the event – whether that’s taking surveys, participating in live polls, watching live videos, playing games or making changes to their agendas.  If there are other websites, devices or apps that your attendees need to use to do these things at the event, then it will have a negative impact on your app’s adoption rates.  Most app providers won’t have everything you’d like to do built into their solution, however the good ones out there will be able to integrate with just about any digital solution these days.

Too Many Adverts

Many attendees stop using apps when they see too many ads and promotions that delay or even stop them from achieving what they want to do. It may seem obvious but the trick to creating powerful advertising in your event app is making it relevant. Choose an app that allows you to put ads in front of people who are likely to respond to them. And instead of linking them to a promotional web page, send them to a piece of educational content like an eBook that will add value to their experience.

Neglecting Take-Aways

One thing an event app does well is provide an easy way for attendees to keep key content, contacts and information from events. The ‘digital backpack’ that they take with them to share materials with their bosses or follow up on sales leads. Yet many events fail to take advantage of this important tool – either through lack of promotion or lack of support on the app itself. Make sure your attendees always have a way to collect what’s important.

Written by Ben Hill, Director of Business Development, Zerista EMEA 

 

 

Create the App Experience Your Attendees Want

Say goodbye to printed programmes and help your attendees connect to the right content and right people at the right time. Launch your event apps in no time and learn how people are engaging with your events. Remove the hassle of dealing with different technology providers by using one fully integrated platform for registrations, sessions and apps.

INFOGRAPHIC: Ten Most Popular Data Collection Tools for Event Planners

Posted on by Eventsforce

1309 EF Infographic Top 10_small preview imageWe’ve been talking a lot about event personalisation over the past few weeks – the idea that you can tailor a delegate’s experience based on what you already know about them.   It is seen as one of the top priorities for event planners this year and its uptake is largely due to the use of sophisticated data collection tools – from event registration systems and RFID to online surveys and event apps.

Event planners are using these tools to collect and analyse valuable delegate information to create more powerful and targeted events.  But which are the most effective?

Have a look at the infographic below for our top ten list based on the feedback of more than 160 senior event planners – starting from the most popular:

1309 EF Infographic Top 10

Top 6 Considerations When Integrating Your Event Data with Other Business Systems

Posted on by Eventsforce

Untitled design (20)Almost every blogger, analyst, journalist and vendor has identified data integration as one of the most important trends in the events industry this year. The concept isn’t something new with most organisations having taken on some form of an integration project through payment gateways, registration scanning tools or event apps. What is new, however, is the increasing number of event planners taking the plunge and integrating their event data with some of their organisations’ other business systems – from finance and CRM to marketing and membership systems.

The case for data integration is quite simple:  It makes business sense. It cuts costs and improves your team’s productivity. It reduces the endless hours event planners spend replicating data from one system to another and it also helps eliminate all the errors and inconsistencies commonly associated with data entry. More importantly, it makes better use of your data by putting it in the hands of the people who need it the most. Integration between your event management and membership systems, for example, can provide automatic delegate membership checks as part of your event registration process.  Integration with your finance system can provide your events team with real-time updates on delegate payments.  Integration with your CRM can help you create detailed invitation lists, whilst providing your sales team with new leads whenever you have new registrations.

If this is something you’re considering doing in the near future, then there are some key things to think about to make sure your data integration project works and brings real value around your events. Have a look below:

Make Sure You Know What You Want to Achieve

The most important consideration when implementing a data integration project is to figure out why you want to integrate your event data with another system. Is there a strong business need for it? Can it help solve a particular problem around your events, like chasing delegate payments from your finance team?  In the case of an event app, what data do you want to pass on from your event management system? Should the app be used by delegates to make changes to their agendas?  What will this entail and how is that information tracked?  Assess and document the benefits of integrating the two systems together, both in terms of cost and time savings, before making any decisions. If you’re finding it difficult to identify how the integration is going to answer important questions around your events, improve the service you provide to your delegates or create efficiencies within your events team, you’re probably wasting your time.

Ensure All Stakeholders Are Involved from the Beginning

shutterstock_61234468The more you know about exactly what you want to achieve, the more likely you are able to identify who needs to be involved in the project.  If you want to integrate your event data with your CRM, then it makes sense to have your CRM manager involved.  If it’s with your accounting system, then it should be your finance manager, and so on.  The next step is to approach your software providers, find out if the integration is technically possible and agree on the objectives.  It is in your interest to help the provider understand your business requirements correctly as this will help them accurately identify and integrate all the required data points.

A common pitfall at this point is for event planners to pass the project on to their developers or IT departments but you need to remember, data integration is a business initiative, not a technology one.  There should be someone throughout the whole process that understands the value of this data and will be able to lead discussions about the long-term goals of the project in order to make it consistent, successful and beneficial.

The other important factor is good communication with all team members throughout the duration of the project. This involves ensuring that there is ‘buy in’ for your project from everyone involved – from the executives in the different departments within your organisation to the techies who will be carrying out the roll out of the project and the events team whose work will be affected by the integration. Everyone need to understand what it is you are trying to achieve and why – you’ll be in a better position to identify potential problems and won’t need to make as many last-minute changes to the development work.

Agree Detailed Specifications & Data Maps Before Starting

It is crucial to determine early on which systems need to talk to each other, which fields within your systems need to be updated and how often this needs to be done. Is the data going to flow one way or two ways between the systems? So if you’re integrating your registration software with a CRM solution, you should decide which questions from your registration page (names, address, telephone numbers) should be updated in the CRM and vice versa. This ‘data mapping’ process is important as it ensures that the right data goes into the right field of each system.

Often, your expectations of what you’re able to do must be realigned as the sheer quantity of data that needs to be dealt with is sometimes underestimated – especially with CRM integrations. Gathering the data can be harder than you think and the data you have might need more ‘cleaning up’ than you first thought.  Take delegate phone numbers, for example. They could be entered in all sorts of different formats: ‘020-888-4567’ or ‘(020) 888-4567’ or they may have no separators at all.  Slightly different formats, minor typos or extra spaces and characters in your CRM system can cause problems when your event management system is expecting things one way and gets another. Take these factors into account when mapping out your data flows. Consult with both software providers and make sure you have workarounds put in place as even the smallest discrepancies and inconsistencies can stop your integration from working as it should.

Be Realistic Over Time and Budget!Untitled design (4)

The good news is that integrating two pieces of software together is no longer the big financial commitment it once was, largely due to generic communications tools (such as Java, APIs and REST) that make it simple to consume and post data from one system to another. Dealing with good software companies also helps as they can provide all the relevant support and expertise you need – which means the whole process can take as little as a few days at a fraction of the cost. However, don’t underestimate the time and budget you need to allocate for such a project.

Think about things like data discrepancies we mentioned earlier on.  If your event management and membership systems, for example, record delegate birth dates in different formats, you will probably need to invest in a bit of development work that will allow the automatic conversation of data from one format to the other. This is a small example of a simple format issue and by itself, no big task.  But multiply this across thousands of data fields and records and dozens of types of formats, and the development work to do clean-up, workarounds and validation can be substantial. Remember that development time can be expensive so think about all these eventualities when mapping out your data flows at the beginning of the project.

Allocate Adequate Technical Resources

Avoid wasting valuable time by ensuring you have the adequate IT staff on hand to answer any technical queries that may come up during the development, implementation and testing stages of your data integration project. Developers from your event management solution provider, for example, may have specific inquiries about the set-up of your bespoke finance system or vice-versa. If you don’t have the necessary technical staff, consider hiring an independent consultant or specialist system integrator for the duration of the project. Once the development phase is over, your technical staff should also be responsible for the proper testing of the integration to ensure that data flow between the two systems is correct, complete and up-to-date.

Make Time for Thorough Testing and User Acceptanceintro_tech_to_assn_congress

Both the technical and business teams need to be involved in the testing stage to ensure that the results are as expected or if anything needs to be resolved.  So if it’s an integration with your finance package, set up a test on your event management system and put through enough transactions to make sure both sides are comfortable and have covered all delegate payment scenarios.  It is then the responsibility for each department head to train their relevant teams on how the system works.

Ensure your team are aware of how the integration impacts their daily tasks.  When creating new events in your event management system, for example, staff need to know that certain fields can no longer be changed as they are now also being used by the finance team to track delegate payments. Create an action list of do’s and don’ts or include it with your event management system template each time a user logs in as an administrator.

Conclusion

Click to get in touchThinking about all these points when planning your data integration projects will ensure that the whole process will be smoother and lot more flexible for any changes you want to make in the future. It is important to note though that regardless of size, an integration between two systems is a moving thing and technology can always change. Don’t forget about it once implementation and testing is over. Stay on top of it with continuous testing and regular meetings with your software providers to ensure everything is working as it should.

Written by Ian Webb, Business Development Manager, Eventsforce

 

Top 8 Security Questions to Ask Your Event Technology Provider

Posted on by Eventsforce

Data Security

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many of you have read the scandalous stories we saw in the headlines last year regarding major security breaches at companies like Talk Talk and the Ashley Madison dating site.  Cyber hackers raised their game with millions of people having had their private data stolen and national governments scrambling to combat the growing threat of cyber-attacks. Now imagine your organisation’s systems got hacked and exposed the personal details of the hundreds (or thousands) of delegates attending your events each year.  Doesn’t really bear thinking about, does it?

Events deal with highly sensitive customer information, including names, emails, telephone numbers, employment information, disabilities and other confidential details. The wealth of information we collect from our delegates is a gold mine for hackers.  Safeguarding this data is critical and more and more organisations are starting to see the importance of this issue. Our new data security survey found that 80% of event planners marked data security as a top priority for 2016.  Surprisingly, however, only 40% of them felt they had the adequate security policies in place across their organisations.   In fact, according to MPI members at last month’s MPI European Meetings & Events Conference, event planners were said to be lacking awareness on the topic of cyber security despite the global terrorism threat1.

So how do we address this issue of event technology security?

Most event planners these days deal with some form of event registration technology that helps them manage all their event and delegate data.  The software captures, manages and stores a lot of the sensitive data we mentioned earlier – so it makes sense to start there. Have a look at the data security policies of your event tech provider.  Are you confident they have the right processes in place to safeguard your data? Are they doing everything they can to minimise the risk of breach?

Here are the top 8 data security questions you should be asking your event tech provider today:

How is My Event Data Protected?

Maximum protection of your event data should probably be your event technology provider’s top priority.   You want to ensure that your event data is fully secure and protected by a comprehensive recovery system.  The first step in achieving this is the use of strong industry-standard encryption, like HTTPS and AES, which helps protect your data from prying eyes and can provide you with assurance that it hasn’t been modified in any way. Find out how your data is encrypted both at rest (when stored in servers) and in transit (when accessing data from your event management system over an Internet network). ID-100354956

What Data Security and Safeguarding Policies Do You Have in Place?

Find out where your database is stored, how it is stored and how often they back it up – the more often, the better so that no changes can be lost from your database if restoration is required. In the case of a breach to their own servers, find out what response plans they have in place to protect your data.  Find out what security policies they have in place within their organisation – how do they protect their own data and how do they meet regulatory and legislative requirements?  Who has access to client data, how do they handle authorisation and what happens when someone leaves? How do they share client information (email/phone) and where they do they store this information?

 How Can I Ensure Secure Access to my Event Management System?

All major event management systems manage access via username and password authentication.  However, you can also manage access using an external authentication service, which can restrict access for certain individuals to particular functions (e.g. abstract reviews) or particular events. Find out if your event tech provider can integrate your event management solution with a Single Sign-On (SSO) system. This will allow you to sign in using your company’s existing corporate authentication infrastructure – so passwords are never submitted to your event system and access can be controlled centrally by your organisation. If someone from your team leaves their job, then their access to all systems can be cut off from one place.

SSO improves security by giving you the choice to restrict event websites and registration to internal personnel or selected individuals or groups, effectively making them private. Only people chosen to view the event website or register for the event will be able to do so and invitations cannot be shared – useful if you have an internal awards event going on involving confidential company information.

Where is my Event Data Stored?

As mentioned above, this is something that should be outlined in the security policy of your event technology provider. It is worth noting, however, that if your event management software provider is storing your data in US-based datacentres and you deal with delegates from the EU, then you need to ensure that they comply with the newly announced Privacy Shield agreement. This replaces the old Safe Harbor agreement, which allowed US companies to legally transfer European citizens’ data to America, provided the location it was being sent to had the security and privacy conditions that met EU standards.

Read more: New EU/US Data Sharing Deal: What Event Planners Need to Know

If you are using a web-based system, find out the physical location of their cloud servers and whether or not they adhere to EU Data Protection regulations. Find out who has access to these servers and what kind of security procedures they have in place.

Do You Own My Data?

This is an important question as some event management technology companies have a legal right to use your data for their own marketing purposes, which means it’s highly likely that they store this data somewhere other than your company’s database on their client servers.  This increases the chance of breach so again, you need to find out what data protection policies they have within their own organisation, how they manage access to this data, what do they use it for and how long they keep it.

Are You PCI-DSS Compliant?

Our survey revealed that almost 50% of event planners who took payment from their delegates didn’t know if they were PCI-DSS compliant and a further 73% were unaware of the fines for non-compliance (ranging anywhere from $5,000 to $100,000).  If your events are set up to accept payments from delegates via credit or debit cards, then your organisation is obligated to achieving and maintaining compliance with the PCI Data Security Standard (more info here).  One way of simplifying compliance is to outsource the process to one of the many PCI-DSS-certified payment gateways that meet the required standards, such as Stripe, PayPal, Sage Pay and Worldpay, among others. However, make sure you understand from your event tech provider how these payment gateways interface with your event management/registration system. If your event website integrates with these gateways via an API, then you are still liable for PCI compliance since your servers capture and transmit the credit/debit card data first. Equally, if your event management system uses its own payment gateway or processes payments on your behalf, make sure that their systems have the correct level of compliance and that they are not permanently storing your delegate payment card data on their servers.

Read more: Top 5 Things to Think Abut When Dealing with APIs

What Security Precautions Do I Need to Take?

If your event management system is integrated with other third party systems (CRM, event apps, finance packages), your event management software provider may have issued you with an API key for any integrations.  Often used instead of usernames and passwords, the key allows your event app and other third party applications access to your event data, and vice-versa. Remember that anyone who has access to this key has access to your data – so you need to make sure it doesn’t get into the wrong hands.  You can minimise the risk of breach by asking your event tech provider to issue different API keys for different functions – for example, use one key to connect your system to the delegate section of your event app and another to connect it to the exhibitor section of your event app. Also, if you’re integrating with more than one system, ask for separate API keys for each integration (event app, CRM etc).  This way, if one of your API keys gets lost or exposed, you can revoke the key (which disables the integration) and set up a new one.  If you have one API key for all your integrations, then a data breach would lead to far more serious consequences for you and your organisation.

How Long Do You Keep My Data For?

In our survey, 54% of event planners said they use their event management systems as a permanent storage space for all their event data.  If you’re happy with your event tech provider’s data security policies, then keeping your data in the system after your event is complete is a good idea – especially if you don’t have adequate procedures to safeguard this data within your own organisation. Find out how long they keep this data on their servers, whether it is moved to other locations or servers and whether or not they delete it after a defined period of time.

Conclusion

Click to get in touchThere is no such thing as 100% security when it comes to safeguarding your data.  However, following best practices and taking the precautions outlined above can help you understand the risks involved and minimise the chances of a data breach.

To learn more about event technology security and how Eventsforce’s systems keep your data safe, read the related posts below or get in contact.

Written by Steve Baxter, CTO of Eventsforce

1 C&IT: Event Planners Don’t Understand Real Threat of Cyber Hacking

 

INFOGRAPHIC: How Safe Is Your Event Data?

Posted on by Eventsforce

There have been a number of high-profile data breaches over the last year and though there have been no major incidents involving the events industry, it is definitely something we need to prepare ourselves for.  Events deal with highly sensitive customer information, including names, emails, telephone numbers, employment information, disabilities and so on.  Ensuring this data is kept in a safe place is critical not just for delegates, but for any organisation storing this information.

Last month, we conducted a survey with event planners in the UK and the US to highlight some important trends around this issue.  The results have been very insightful.

The study, which was conducted across 50 organisations in the UK and the US, revealed that 80% of event planners marked data security as a top priority for 2016 yet only 40% felt they had the adequate security policies in place across their organisations.

The survey exposes key areas – like password hygiene, delegate payments and regulatory compliance – where event planners need to put greater attention to in order to prevent data from getting into the wrong hands. For example: The survey found that 81% of event planners do not change the passwords to their event management systems as often as they should (less than once a year) and a further 33% claim to have shared their passwords with other people.  This increases the risk of a breach and makes it difficult to accurately identify who has access to the system at any given point in time.

For a more comprehensive look at these insights and some of the other findings from the Eventsforce ‘How Safe Is Your Event Data’ survey, please download the infographic below:

Infographic_How safe is your event data JPG FINAL

 

Infographic: The ROI of Event Data Integration

Posted on by Eventsforce

We have talked a lot about data integration (Why is Data Integration So Important for Your Events) and APIs (Top 5 Things to Think About When Dealing with APIs) over the last few weeks.  It is a topic that is hotly debated across the events industry as more and more organisations try to find new ways of increasing the ROI of their event technology investments.

Integrating your event management software with other business systems within your organisation can bring a host of benefits. It can save you time by reducing manual data entry. It can eliminate errors and inconsistencies that commonly cause problems in communications.  It can cut costs and make your team more productive – and more importantly, it can unlock the true value of your event data by putting it in the hands of the people who need it.

So how does it work and what does an integrated system look like?  For a quick overview on some of the key integrations that make sense for your events, have a look at the infographic below (or click here to download):

New EU/US Data Sharing Deal: What Event Planners Need to Know

Posted on by Eventsforce

Untitled design (5)Last week, the EU and the US finally struck a new deal on data sharing designed to protect EU citizens’ data when transferred across the Atlantic. The so-called ‘Privacy Shield’ deal replaces the ‘Safe Harbor’ agreement that stood for more than 15 years before being struck down by a court last October. The decision left thousands of businesses – especially those reliant on the cloud – scrambling to figure out how to legally operate data transfers, while US and EU regulators spent the last three months hammering out the terms of Privacy Shield. But there are already questions being raised about the new agreement.  The language used in the official announcement is woolly at best and there are fears that the deal has a number of flaws which can raise further legal challenges in the future[1].

So how is this relevant to the events industry?  Events deal with highly sensitive delegate information – from names, addresses and employment information to things like gender, disabilities and dietary preferences.  Up until last year, the pact made it relatively easy for any company hosting events to legally store EU delegate information in US data centres.  However, with the absence of Safe Harbor and a general lack of certainty around the new deal, there is still little to prevent European Data Protection Agencies from taking enforcement actions against companies suspecting of breaching European law.  Storing EU delegate data in the US can still put organisations at risk.

What Was Safe Harbor?

The Safe Harbor agreement allowed US companies to transfer European citizens’ data to America, provided the location it was being sent to had the privacy conditions that met EU standards. It was first put in place in 2000, because the US does not have one single federal law regulating data storage. Its constitution does offer some protection to US citizen data, but it provides no assurances for foreign citizens.  It is an important agreement for thousands of companies operating in Europe.

Why Was the Agreement Ruled ‘Invalid’?

When former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, Edward Snowden, made revelations in 2013 about the US surveillance system, an Austrian student filed a complaint against Facebook to the Irish data protection authority. He claimed Snowden’s claims confirmed that Facebook wasn’t sufficiently protecting user data as the NSA was carrying out mass surveillance on technology companies. The case went all the way up to EU’s top court, which in October 2015 said that the Safe Harbor agreement was no longer valid because US public authorities were able to access EU citizen data and individuals had no means of getting any compensation for any misused data.  Since then, the US and EU have had to renegotiate a new data sharing agreement that allows data flows across the Atlantic to continue without breaking the law.

How is New Deal Different?

Under the terms of the new deal – which are still being negotiated – the US will give an annual written commitment that it won’t indulge in mass surveillance of EU citizens, and this will be audited by both sides once a year. US companies wishing to import EU citizens’ data must also give robust obligations on how personal data is processed, and comply to the same standards as European data protection laws. But there are already fears that the deal may be too broad for some to swallow. Ashley Winton, UK Head of data protection and privacy at lawyers, Paul Hasting LLP said: “The results of months’ worth of negotiation appears weak, and if adopted we are likely to see further legal challenge in the European courts” [2].

Why Is This Data-Sharing Deal So Important for Your Events?

If you are hosting events in Europe, find out where your delegate data is being stored – if you don’t already know. If it’s within the EU, then you shouldn’t have any concerns.  If it is in a US data centre, you need to make sure that you have the correct mechanisms and methods in place to legally transfer data to the US from Europe.   This not only applies to the data you store within your organisation but more importantly, the third-party IT systems that also have access to your event and delegate data. This includes vendors that supply you with registration systems and event apps to business systems like CRM and finance packages that may be integrated with your event management software.

Find out exactly how these organisations are safeguarding your delegate data and keeping it private. Find out where they are storing your data – especially from those US-based companies who are heavily reliant on the cloud.  There are many cloud providers which operate solely within the bounds of the European Union, but there are many out there who operate through their large data centres in the US – which would mean the new ‘Privacy Shield’ deal applies to them. Find out the physical location of their cloud servers. Find out if they contract their support services outside the EU.  Find out who has access to your delegate data, and what kind of security policies they have in place. Find out if your data is encrypted and whether or not they adhere to EU Data Protection regulations.  Solutions could involve drafting new contractual agreements with delegates, encrypting US servers and building EU-based servers and support centres.

The Road Ahead

The uncertainty around the new deal may still mean that the movement of data from the EU to the US can become a legal matter if EU delegates have grounds to believe their consent for data storage and usage has not been agreed. Companies may be able to transfer data if they have free and informed consent of users and this gives event planners another thing to think about before moving their data outside the EU.

Click to get in touchAs the terms of the new, safer ‘Safe Harbor’ get ratified by EU members, the current legal limbo may close up soon enough. Last month, the US passed the Judicial Redress Act – a necessary step to achieving the new deal – which provides a path for EU citizens to sue over privacy complaints in the US.  However, it also passed a last minute Republican amendment that provides for an exception on national security grounds – which undermines the entire point of the whole measure. So as it stands, there are still no guaranteed assurances for businesses wanting to export data from Europe to the US right now.  What we can be sure of is that the ending of Safe Harbor and the announcement of Privacy Shield should pave the way for a new era in transparency from companies on how they use customer information and how we define data ownership.

Written by Steve Baxter, CTO, Eventsforce

[1]The Register: Safe Harbor ripped and replaced with Privacy Shield in last-minute US-Europe deal (includes comments from former Gartner Vice President, French Caldwell)

[2]The Register: Safe Harbor ripped and replaced with Privacy Shield in last-minute US-Europe deal

Source: CNBC ‘US and EU in data privacy clash: what you need to know’