What will be the Impact of GDPR Compliance in Europe & UK?

According to Statista, the global big data market is projected to reach $103 billion by 2027. The surge in big data’s growth offers valuable insights and invites potential cyber threats. As we navigate the sea of information abundance, the specter of cybersecurity risks reminds us that data protection impact assessment is imperative for vigilant protection. This concern spans nations, businesses, and individuals, prompting the development of unique Data Protection Acts worldwide to safeguard the rights of people in the digital era.

The Data Protection Act 1998 (c 29) is a United Kingdom Act of Parliament designed to protect personal data stored on computers or in an organized paper filing system. It follows the EU Data Protection Directive 1995 protection, processing, and data movement.

There is a growing buzz around The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance, a regulation with which the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union, and the European Commission intend to strengthen and unify data protection for all individuals within the European Union (EU). GDPR compliance is applicable to all businesses operating within the EU, including the UK. The deadline for the same was May 25, 2018.

Implications of GDPR

GDPR was enforced as a law across the EU on May 25, 2018, implying that any business operating within the EU and UK has about 4 months to comply with its guidelines. The underlying objective of the regulation is to emphasize and provide more rights for individuals over their own data and keep a thorough check on how companies use and process private and confidential information.

Like any other compliance guidelines, there was a fair amount of ambiguity and anxiety around GDPR, and organizations are even worried about being heavily penalized for non-compliance. Nevertheless, this update to the data protection legislation across Europe is a major force.

While the turmoil continues, major social media platforms such as Facebook are making the necessary modifications to deal with the changes. A recent news report states how Facebook will roll out new privacy tools ahead of European GDPR laws. Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg, stated, “We’re rolling out a new privacy center globally that will put the core privacy settings for Facebook in one place and make it much easier for people to manage their data.”

Social networking and digitization of communication have been constantly brushing the line between access to information and privacy. Regulations such as these coerce organizations to look inward and evaluate the security protocols and measures taken to control the ebb and flow of data (inward and outward).

At the same time, there are reports on how businesses are looking for software and privacy experts, with global organizations spending millions of dollars on GDPR privacy assessment and compliance guidelines.

This can be a good time for enterprises to assess the impact of GDPR and devise robust data protection impact assessment strategies, focusing on key pillars of data governance framework to secure the critical information and data.

Make Security a part of your system’s architecture

Including Security within the organization’s DNA is the best thing enterprises must consider to avoid violations and incidents. The overall system must be designed by considering integrated security instead of bringing it in later. Security protocols should be integral to the business process when the organization’s architecture is built. In fact, if needed, even a security officer or a security team must be created to enable compliance across the organization.

Ultimately, assessing the impact of GDPR and bringing in security aspects within the architecture of enterprises while they are being designed will solve complex security and data protection issues.

Robust BYOD policy

It’s no more about just safeguarding data on the computer systems within the organization. Today, organizations offer employees the edge to get more flexible with their work habits and environment. With this in perspective, enterprises are allowing employees to bring their own devices within the office premises, offering them the flexibility to work from anywhere, anytime.

This creates tremendous anxiety and apprehensions around data security and protection. Complications could be created in case there is a cyber-attack. Hence, the solution is to build a strong password policy that comprises a complex combination of alphanumeric and special characters. Disabling and enabling the systems should be a highly monitored activity for the IT department. While organizations take care of the mobility needs of the workforce, security protocols must cover all the possible devices within the premises.

Monitoring the Internet traffic

Without sounding dictatorial and autocratic in perspective, it is imperative for enterprises to monitor the internet traffic and even the traffic that goes within internal networks. This is to monitor the kind of information that gets transacted within nodes. This can be possible with an active firewall policy that helps obstruct the traffic moving across malicious sites.

Firewall solutions must be chosen according to the nature of a business. For instance, if you are in the media and communications business, you cannot afford to obstruct news sites and social networking portals. That’s your fodder for information!

In Conclusion

All this makes sense. Organizations have been considering it for a long period of time. However, nothing can be foolproof. The question that pops up is: how does doing all this help if the organization’s system still gets hacked?

It does help in many ways.

First, finding the loopholes and fixing the issues for Disaster Management is easier. It makes an organization more resilient, where it can bounce back into action. A robust data protection impact assessment strategy, GDPR compliance testing process, and strong security policy enable organizations to comply effectively with any upcoming State or Federal guidelines and rules.

Cigniti has a dedicated Security Testing Centre of Excellence (TCoE) with the required certifications and has developed methodologies, processes, templates, checklists, and guidelines for web applications, software products, networks, and the cloud.

Connect with our dedicated team of security testing specialists with deep expertise spanning multiple domains/industries and cutting-edge technological resources/tools.