Europe – It’s the Final Countdown!

Europe – It’s the Final Countdown!

There is only one day left before the European Union’s (“EU”) General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) goes into effect on May 25, 2018. As we have reported, the GDPR reaches businesses established outside the EU – that’s right, U.S. businesses are not immune from the reach of GDPR, and the penalties for non-compliance can be substantial; administratively and financially. If you have not yet started to think about whether the GDPR applies to your business or take proactive steps as to how to comply with the GDPR, we recommend that you start doing so now so that, if asked by the Member State Regulators, you can demonstrate that your business is working in ‘good faith’ toward GDPR compliance.

Really, the first step in this process is to assess if your business is subject to the regulation. If “yes”, next, you should begin by evaluating the ways in which your business may be affected by the GDPR. A good start is to determine if you ‘control’ or ‘process’ data of EU (natural persons) Data Subjects – organizations can often wear both hats and with each role comes differing responsibilities. To facilitate your assessment, we have prepared a whitepaper “A Best Practices Guide – GDPR 25 May 2018” and a “Website GDPR-Readiness Assessment”. Your responses to the guidelines and assessment will not only help your business understand its EU personal data privacy requirements, but they will help us work with you to develop a web compliance strategy that is tailored to your business. If you have not already done so, we encourage you to contact us so that we can support your GDPR compliance needs at marketing@bridgeline.com.