Industry Talk

Regular Industry Development Updates, Opinions and Talking Points relating to Manufacturing, the Supply Chain and Logistics.

GDPR & the importance of data protection

On the third anniversary of the implementation of the GDPR, we can confidently say that the regulation is here to stay. Ultimately, data belongs to people and any technique that reinforces that approach – including encryption, tokenisation, data scrambling, data hiding, anonymization, among others – represents a fundamental step to protect small quantities of data that, when aggregated, becomes information.

In this cloud epoch, where data moves between cloud environments, effective data protection regulation is critical. Understanding where data lives, in all its forms and platforms, provides unparalleled control and visibility when it comes to managing both structured and unstructured data sets. This was the aspiration of the GDPR when it was created. Now, more than ever, technology and legislation represent the opportunity to achieve an overarching governance umbrella for how information is discovered, identified, classified and protected. That’s the ultimate goal.

While it’s down to the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) to ensure that the law is being interpreted in the correct manner and provide essential guidance, businesses also have a key role to play in upholding the regulation. Keeping data safe, however, has never been more challenging as over the last year. The mass move to remote working caused by the pandemic meant that businesses had to shift to digital-first approaches virtually overnight. The resulting distributed infrastructure has created new attack vectors for cybercriminals – and, in turn, a greater potential for damaging data breaches.

Within this new reality, becoming cyber resilient is a business necessity. Organisations should make extensive plans to effectively prepare for, respond to and recover from cyber threats. Amid a constantly evolving threat landscape, made even more complex by the global pandemic, protecting against data breaches requires building a road map to cyber resiliency. This way, organisations can ensure they are in the best position to safeguard sensitive information and continue to comply with data privacy regulation such as the GDPR.