GDPR

What is GDPR Compliance?

General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR is a law centered on user consent. Countries focus on GDPR compliance given the importance of user privacy on personal data and to avoid personal data breaches. Brazil’s Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados (LGPD) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) are such examples. It's the core of Europe's digital privacy legislation on data privacy by the European union.

Any organization that doesn't follow new norms on GDPR compliance will end up facing severe fines. Therefore GDPR Compliance is not optional, but mandatory for all companies.

Under the EU GDPR, organizations are required to appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO) to ensure data protection compliance of its organization.

Data Protection Principles on GDPR Compliance

GDPR Compliance ensures that your product adheres to major data protection principles, including various security measures. These are outlined below.

Lawfulness and Transparency

To ensure GDPR compliance, an organization's data collection practice needs to be transparent and should not hide anything from the data subjects. The Privacy Policy page should state the types of personal information that is collected for data processing and the reasons for collecting them.

Purpose Limitation

Organizations should only collect personal information for a specific purpose, they should clearly state the purpose and only collect personal information for as long as necessary to complete the specified purpose. The GDPR compliance has data controllers accountable for the collection and the use of personal data. Disposal of personal data too will be managed through a data controller.

Data Minimisation

Data Minimisation ensures that an organization must only process data needed to achieve its data processing purposes. This provides 2 major benefits. First, during data breaches, the unauthorized party who caused the data breach will only have access to a limited data set, helping to increase information security and data privacy. Second, it helps to keep data accurate and up to date.

Storage Limitation

Data Storage Limitation is another important data protection principle, which ensures organizations remove personal data when it’s no longer necessary.

Integrity and Confidentiality

This GDPR compliance principle ensures security. Organizations should encrypt user data after processing personal data or pseudonymised data. This is considered a key organizational protection measure on data protection and information security.

Right to Access Information

Subject Access Requests (SAR) is the right of a user to obtain personal data records. Data protection laws such as GDPR, empower individuals to access their personal information.

Accountability

Accountability ensures that organizations have the required documentation in place to prove they are GDPR compliant and provide data protection. E.g. data protection impact assessments, privacy notices, etc.

Impact of GDPR Compliance and Other Privacy Laws

Some compliance challenges include the knowledge gap in implementation and complex nature of the regulation. Some businesses have had to terminate operations simply due to the nature of their business (i.e. data collection). The hefty fines (€20,000,000 or 4% of total annual global turnover) was of major concern and the compliance speed varied from industry to industry (finance and banking heading the way) and geographically.

Dealing with data isn’t easy. But ensuring your customer’s privacy on sensitive personal data and personal data protection ensures benefits in the long run.