GDPR – do businesses need to examine networks and internet links?

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will be introduced in less than a year but a recent survey has highlighted that the majority of businesses haven’t yet put provisions in place to ensure compliance.

Worse still, many of the solutions for GDPR compliance involve moving services to the cloud. Companies don’t seem to appreciate that this might mean upgrading their internal and external networks to cope with increased traffic.

A survey by NetApp of 750 CIOs and IT managers from the UK, France and Germany revealed that just over a third of them had so far assigned funding to meet GDPR, which comes into force on May 25th, 2018. The survey also found that it’s not always clear who’s responsible for data compliance, complete understanding of the demands of GDPR isn’t widespread and that preparation for GDPR compliance is moving slowly.

The move of data to third-party platforms (the cloud) is one of the issues that’s prompted GDPR, a complete re-evaluation of control and responsibility for personal information for organisations operating within the EU. But while the cloud is part of the driver, it’s also part of the solution.

To take one simple example, when it comes to looking after people’s emails and addresses, people in IT who have taken GDPR compliance training courses have said that the major cloud-based email platforms Gmail and Outlook 365 already have the mechanisms in place to enable data controllers to be compliant.

So it’s likely that other cloud-based solutions, like CRM, accounts packages and many more, will follow suit, offering compliance tools as a further benefit to businesses. But there’s an underlying issue – businesses will have to make sure that everyone can to be online permanently, from offices, when mobile and perhaps at home too.

If you’re concerned about GDPR compliance, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is providing as much information as possible – a good place to start is on the ICO website.

If you think you will need to assess and possibly upgrade your connectivity, whether it’s to the internet, internally or mobile, get in touch today. We’re happy to discuss the implications without any obligation.