GDPR or General Data Protection Regulation is regulatory guidelines that businesses in the EU member states are obliged to follow in order to protect critical data, privacy and personal information of the EU citizens for the transactions made within the member states. In addition to this, it also regulates the export of critical data outside EU.

Noncompliance to the regulations can cost companies huge section of their revenue. Every company that aims to do business in Europe needs to know few important things about GDPR. GDPR is adopted by European parliament in April 2016. The new regulations replaced the data protection rules drafted in 1995 turning it obsolete.

Is your Organization GDPR Compliant? Read to Find Out…

GDRP will have a global impact as any company that market products or services to the EU residents is subject to obey the General Data Protection Regulations, regardless of the geographical location or existence.

The aim of GDPR is to enforce a uniform or constant data security laws and guidelines on EU members; hence the member states are not required to draft their own data security laws. These regulations and guidelines are consistent and EU member states are bound to obey these rules.

All the organizations regardless of small, medium or large scale set-ups must be aware of the requirements of GDPR and must ensure to comply these rules by May 2018.

Who is Responsible for GDPR Compliance in Organizations?

The two important role mechanisms in data handling and management include the data controller and the data processor. Hence, these are the front-end authorities that must ensure GDPR compliance in the organizations.

Data Controller: Here, the controller can be an institute or an organization, including government or non- government bodies. The controller of data knows the purpose of collecting and storing the personal information.

Data Processor: On the other hand, processor is the IT Company or the concerned authorities responsible for processing of data or personal information.

As long as the controller and processer are dealing with the data related to the EU citizen, both the parties are obliged to comply with GDPR guidelines. Once the GDPR comes into effect, probably by May 2018, the controlling and processing authorities must ensure that the information is being processed transparently, lawfully or legally for a specific purpose.

Once the aim of gathering or retaining the personal data is fulfilled, it must be deleted with permanently without fail.

All You Need to Know About Data Protection Principles

The GDPR requirement states that the EU companies must process, store and protect user data following certain guidelines. They can only store and process personal data after receiving consent from an individual to whom the data belongs. It is allowed to share personal data using reliable resources after individual consent and it must be deleted appropriately after the purpose is served.

Under GDPR, the definition of personal data is expanded significantly and includes personal details about an individual, IP addresses, economic figures, medical related information, genetic data, ethnic data, political opinions, sexual orientation as well as cultural details among others.

Tips to protect personally identifiable information

Preparing a data protection plan, conducting a risk assessment, implementing measures to mitigate risk and testing incident response plans can work towards protecting identifiable information successfully.

It is better to ensure that your organization is in compliance with General Data Protection Regulation and this can best be done by continuous monitoring as well as constant improvement of existing data security processes. Incentives and penalties must be in place to motivate organization’s employees to follow the new rules and policies.