Microsoft Office 365 Does GDPR
If you haven’t received an email yet about the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) you must not be living on planet earth.
That or you don’t check your email very often.
You see, most of the providers we use on a regular basis are global.
Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Salesforce, etc.
This means they do business in The European Union.
And as a result those vendors are now subject to the new privacy regulation enacted in the European Union which brings the tech world yet another acronym fondly known as GDPR.
So what is GDPR?
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679 is a regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy for all individuals within the European Union. It also addresses the export of personal data outside the EU. Source Wikipedia.
To assist their customers, many of the above mentioned vendors are providing help through various means.
Microsoft, within their Office 365 service, launched a GDPR compliance helper section.
They released a simple well-thought-out system to help companies that do business in the EU move towards the requirements of GDPR.
The cool thing here is that rather than having to hiring some company to come in and give you their take on what they think you need to do for compliance,
Microsoft provides you with a recipe to follow.
They applied a large amount of brain cells to come up with something that’s applicable to all of their customers and that can be used as a best practice on how to address GDPR.
Sure there are some recommendations in there that will favor Microsoft.
But that’s not necessarily a bad thing if it gets you compliant.
Microsoft Office 365 is a great platform and is continually making strides to improve and simplify tech for business.
So if your company does business in the EU and has Microsoft Office 365…
You have a path to get to GDPR compliance.
If your company doesn’t have a plan for GDPR the Microsoft blueprint is a good reference for what you will need to do.
As the world continues to raise their level of connectedness I’m sure that more regulations will be imposed for good or for bad.
At the end of the day the important thing is to understand how GDPR and regulations like it apply to your business.
It’s super helpful when things are interpreted into simple steps that businesses can follow and implement.
This way you can get back to growing and operating your business.
