Here Comes GDPR: Get Ready for May 25, 2018!
The days of consumers signing rights to their personal information over to companies they do business with are coming to a close. We’re entering an era of increased customer privacy and data security.
Millions of people work, shop and play online every day, leaving behind volumes of data that can include sensitive information. A study by IDC estimates that by 2020 there will be 5,200GB of data for every consumer on earth. In total, that works out at 40 zettabytes, or 57 times more than every grain of sand on every beach.
Regulators have increasingly become concerned with how companies capture, manage and protect the swathes of data they hold on their customers. Within the European Union (EU), these concerns have resulted in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a new regulation which aims to give consumers greater rights and security over how their data is used.
GDPR is a necessary replacement for the dated EU Data Directive, which came into effect in 1995. Established during the Internet’s formative years, the EU Data Directive is widely regarded as obsolete and incapable of meeting today’s cybersecurity requirements.
This is understandable considering the average smartphone today has 10x more processing power than a PC in 1995, while eCommerce sales are over €500 billion a year in Europe alone.
The new legislation establishes guidelines on how companies should handle customer privacy, store data securely, and respond to security breaches. It also attempts to offer a unified standard of operating across Europe so that companies do not have to deal with several regulatory environments.
For the first time, obligations will be placed on data controllers and data processors. In other words, GDPR will affect not just an organisation (the controller) but also its outsourcing provider (e.g., a cloud computing company, or a third-party payment provider). Previous legislation placed responsibility solely on the controller.
To help them become GDPR-compliant, data controllers and data processors will be able to rely on Peer Mountain, an enterprise-ready, blockchain-agnostic P2P trust platform. Peer Mountain’s patent-pending technology and protocol uses cryptography to allow people and institutions to create and own trusted records that encompass digital identity, trust-based relationships, and proof of activities. Learn more.
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