It is pretty impossible to spend a month without hearing any news about a data breach or other kinds of cyber-attacks. Every year, thousands of businesses get victims of data breaches, malware, ransomware, etc. In such situations, it is often discovered that the victim’s negligence towards proper security measures resulted in the security breach. But the data security situation is a bit different in European countries because they care a lot about data protection and online privacy. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is one such regulation designed to ensure data privacy and protection of European Union residents.
What is GDPR?
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a set of laws that demands businesses to protect the privacy and personal data of EU residents for all those activities conducted within EU states. It also regulates personal data exportation outside the EU. The GDPR got approval from the European Parliament in April 2016 and provides one of the best and strong data privacy laws in the world. But this regulation makes it quite challenging and costly for companies to comply with GDPR. Some of the major data protection and privacy regulations of GDPR include:
- Users should be aware of the data processing.
- Users should have the right to ask about deleting stored personal data.
- Ensure privacy by anonymizing the collected data.
- Deliver notifications in case of a data breach.
- Secure data transfer across borders.
Privacy Data that GDPR Protects
GDPR protects the following privacy data:
- Personal information, such as name, email address, contact number, date of birth, ID number, etc.
- Web data, such as IP address, location, RFID tags, cookie data, and other trackable digital footprints.
- Health data.
- Political opinions.
- Biometric data.
- Ethnic or racial data.
Why is GDPR Data Storage Necessary
From the users’ perspective, GDPR is the type of regulation that is needed in the present time to protect digital privacy and data. The world is rapidly digitalizing and there is no way a person does not get exposure to digital platforms. Similarly, it is becoming essential for businesses to have a digital presence, provide a web interface, and engage customers via digital activities. In addition, our dependence on the mobile device and mobile app are just drowning us to the digital ecosystem. In all such situations, the crucial thing is how is your data processed, collected, analyzed, and stored. For example, many apps ask you to provide your present location using GPS, so is they are tracking you later or how their data center handles the data? All such concerns are enough for regulatory authorities to set up a framework where there exists complete transparency of data privacy and handling by businesses. This is where GDPR presents the main role.
GDPR empowers users to ask companies how they are processing and handling data. It is mandatory for all companies that are running in the EU or outside the EU but interacting with EU residents to clearly present the way they are handling, storing, and analyzing the data. GDPR even allows users to prohibit companies to use personal data for other activities, such as personalized ads, etc.
GDPR Data Storage and Businesses
GDPR is the need for users, but at the same time, it is a hefty job to fulfill by businesses. For ensuring effective GDPR handling, they have to orient data storage according to GDPR regulations. This means they have to be extra careful while handling personal data, set up secure network drives, and everything related to data is made crystal-clear to the users. This requires plenty of resource allocation and advanced security measures to protect all the sensitive individual files and other data assets.
GDPR Compliance with Cloud Data Storage
GDPR applies to all those businesses that are processing and storing the personal information of EU residents. To comply with GDPR, the first way is to set up your on-premises storage space to comply with GDPR protection criteria. But the second and even better way is to use cloud storage services to have GDPR compliance. Cloud data storage makes it more convenient and simpler to comply with GDPR without much of a hassle. Instead of setting up on-premises data storage, local backup, and on-site security measures, you are paying third-party online backup services to process and store the data for you. Following are few main points that present how cloud data storage act as a virtual machine to help comply with GDPR:
- Centralized Data Storage: GDPR requires transparency about where personal information is stored. With cloud storage, a company gets a clear, dedicated, and centralized route of data storage. It can easily track sensitive data and provide more protection required for GDPR compliance.
- Data Management: GDPR gives users the right to ask how is their personal data processed and handled. Cloud storage services help to detect sensitive personal data and set up the required workflow to have the data management required for GDPR compliance. This way, they can unhesitantly explain to users the smooth and transparent way they are handling sensitive data.
- Enhanced Security: If a business is storing personal data, then it must protect it too. With cloud storage, businesses get more advanced data security. A cloud backup service usually encrypts the data before storing it in the cloud. Some even provide the encryption key to the businesses so that no one other than the authorized personnel has access to the data.
Cloud storage presents as a true companion for businesses to have GDPR compliance. In addition, the ability of sharing files, setting up file versions, file sync, and continuous accessibility improves business operations. Besides that, it not just act as the main storage medium, you can also be used for performing an initial backup of data and restore data in case of primary data damage.
Wrapping Up
When there are unlimited number of vulnerabilities and possibilities of data breaches, it is right to be concerned about data privacy and protection. European countries have gone one step further with their strict GDPR. But it is not an easy job for businesses to comply with GDPR and avoid any plenty. Out of many possible ways to comply with GDPR, cloud data storage is a much easier, hassle-free, reliable, and cost-effective method in present times.
