How websites treat personal data, what logging, tracking, and storing of data they perform, is increasingly coming under the remit of global privacy legislation such as GDPR in the EU, and CCPA/R in California (to cite the obvious examples).

Legislation has been slowly gathering pace in terms of codifying how it expects businesses & websites to behave. Websites have been equally slow in coming to terms with their responsibilities.

However, many businesses are beginning to embrace their responsibilities, and are looking to put methodical processes in place to help them achieve a more robust compliance profile.

How do I achieve ‘compliance’ ?

This is a non-trivial question, as it very much depends on what your goals are, and how & where your business operates.

Compliance is not a ‘tick box’ affair which can be simply addressed by installing a cookie banner plugin. Instead, solid legal advice will need to be taken. To achieve this, we can recommend relevant law firms in the UK and the US to help provide you with the advice you need (that we can implement).

Note: our services do not include this legal advice – for that you shall need to use either our recommended legal partners or from another third party. Our services are related to the technical aspects of auditing your website, and implementing the relevant legal advice.

Below are our two services which may be able to help you:

  • Sentinel

    Compliance Project

    From £2450 (+VAT)


    With this one-off project, we’ll work with you, and your chosen legal partner, to understand any privacy issues specific to your website, and implement the recommendations of any compliance advice given.

    We would:

    • Analyse your website for tracking code (eg Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Twitter Widgets)
    • Analyse your website for other potential, known compliance issues (e.g. website form submission storage)
    • List out all potential privacy implications for legal review
    • Implement advised recommendations
    • Integrate any supplied newsletter signup double opt-in code (if required)
    • Provide technical input on any required legal documents; where it relates to the website (e.g. cookies).
    • Update website with any supplied legal documents (e.g. privacy policy, cookie policy, terms & conditions)
    • Implement & test a cookie or consent solution (if required)

    These services apply to UK and US businesses.

    Your chosen legal partner will be responsible for the creation of any legal documents (e.g. cookie policy, terms and conditions, privacy policy). Your chosen legal partner may also be able to advise on other privacy-related issues which are not related specifically to the website.

    Contact Us

  • WatchGuard

    Monthly Compliance Checks

    From £475 pcm (+VAT)


    Performing a one-off privacy project on your website is commendable – however, websites change all the time, especially with WordPress – adding a new plugin may seem innocent enough but, without being thorough, you could be reintroducing issues – gradually undoing all the hard work of your initial privacy project.

    Note: a compliance project (e.g. Sentinel) will need to be performed before subscribing to the WatchGuard service.

    With WatchGuard will we analyse your website on a regular basis, looking for any changes which may potentially impact your privacy compliance. For any issues we report, you are encouraged to seek the relevant legal advice, which we can then implement (e.g. place service behind a cookie compliance banner).

    The exact cost of WatchGuard depends on the size and complexity of your WordPress site but typical implementations are from £475 (+VAT) pcm. WatchGuard can run on a quarterly, monthly, or weekly basis.

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Frequently Asked Questions:

Q. Does this service guarantee compliance?

A. No. Because there is no such guarantee – compliance can only ever be truly tested in the court of law.

However, by working with us, and whatever legal advice you seek, you will be aware of all the currently known compliance issues affecting your website, and have been advised on potential remedies available.

It should also be noted that whilst qualified legal partners can give ‘advice’, different companies have different attitudes to risk. E.g. some websites may wish to show the Facebook Pixel, or Google Analytics to all website visitors (by default), even when they have been made aware of of the legal implications; that is the clients choice – we are not an enforcement agency.

 

Q. What about my CRM system? 

A. The above packages do not cover anything outside of the website (or what is stated above) but we can potentially help with data cleansing your CRM system (e.g. we have worked with Infusionsoft, Active Campaign etc). Please get in touch if you would like to know more. Your chosen legal partner may also be able to advise on non-website related issues.

 

Q. Do I need to purchase ‘Sentinel’ as well as ‘WatchGuard’?

A. No, not necessarily. If you have had no serious compliance work done on your website to date, then you will need to run Sentinel or something similar: we need your website to be in a strong compliance state before you subscribe to the WatchGuard service  – however, you may have already performed similar work which we can use as a starting point.

 

Q. What about changes in legislation?

If required, your chosen legal partner may keep you aware of any changes to national / international privacy legislation that may affect your website. We can supply an audit of aspects of your website which have a privacy-related aspect to them – as a costed service your legal partner can advise you of related changes, and can inform us of any changes we need to make to your website (typically this would be altering the profile of whether a service needs to be behind a cookie banner or not, or the updating of the standard online legal documents).

 

 

Q. Can you help with my app or more complex website?

The services outlined above are for your typical B2B business WordPress website – one that contains limited functionality aside from a contact form. If your website contains complex functionality such as (and not restricted to) private members areas etc; then we would need to investigate further to see if we can help, and create a custom proposal for you (the same applies to mobile apps etc).