EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation

The European Union’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), finalized in May and set to take effect in 2018, will drive huge change in the way organizations manage their data protection.

The GDPR is expected to initiate a strong hiring period for data protection officers, according to a survey conducted by the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAAP).

The new regulation will apply to a large range of businesses from SME’s to Large Enterprises, and the IAAP estimated “that as many as 75,000 data protection officer (DPO) positions will be created in response”.

Furthermore it is estimated that Europe will be short 25.000 data privacy lawyers to timely support organizations to become compliant.

What will the main challenges in data-related compliance be?

The biggest challenge will be to timely and successfully implement the required changes within the already existing systems and organization. 

Once implemented, the Data Privacy Officer (DPO) will have to be able to correctly supervise and manage the data-related activities of the organization.

The complexity of the required change and the time frame in which to complete these changes will be a huge challenge, especially for SME’s since they will not always be able to hire a new DPO and implement all required changes timely.

How can RegTech help companies become GDPR compliant?

RegTech, short for Regulatory Technology, is the use of technology to address regulatory and compliance requirements.

RegTech can help companies in the GDPR transition by first clarifying which requirements apply to them. Easy to use data privacy surveys reveal the data privacy risks for the organization and pinpoint the focus areas.

Next to that RegTech supports the necessary audit of the IT infrastructure (applications and hardware) and helps standardize reporting. In this way especially SME’s can start working on GDPR compliance quickly and at low cost.

RegTech helps standardize the communication and is set up such that relevant data is stored for audit trail purposes which also reduced the compliance risks for the organization. 

Free RegTech offering  free data privacy risk surveys

Find out today if your company is compliant with EU’s data privacy regulations by downloading the free Risk Survey app and use the data privacy risk survey offered by RiskRhino and our partners.

About the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAAP)

The International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) is a resource for professionals who want to develop and advance their careers by helping their organizations successfully manage these risks and protect their data. In fact, we’re the world’s largest and most comprehensive global information privacy community.

For more information about the IAAP, click here.