Data Protection General Regulations: At the Edge of Cybersecurity in Theory and Practice

Data Protection General Regulations do not exist to complicate the lives of digital businesses. GDPR, covering the EU zone, and similar to it in other regions and jurisdictions such as the General Data Protection Law in Brazil, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act in Canada, and so on, were created as a response to the evergrowing cyber threats and preemptive shield to data breaches. Rules are written in blood, and so security protocols and acts are not merely theoretical constructs. They are born out of the practices and motivations behind alarming instances of data security breaches and digital assaults. In other words, Data Protection General Regulations, along with other documents specific to areas, are aimed at securing users' data and safeguarding businesses from financial losses, harm to reputation, and threats to existence.

General Data Protection Regulation Is All About the Improvement

General Data Protection Regulation is being adopted in 2016, after Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC, 1995. Of course, its objective is to safeguard individuals' privacy and ensure that businesses and organizations realize and responsibly handle personal data. But actually, General Data Protection Regulation is a logical and much more substantial advancement and improvement of the earlier legal document on data security on the Internet. 

What Has Changed?

The GDPR has expanded its borders beyond Europe, that is, now this directive applies not only to EU resident companies but also to those who in one way or another encounter the data of residents of the European Union. It sets up significantly higher penalties for non-compliance with its regulations and expands the rights of individuals regarding their personal data. But the most important among others is the commitment of the digital business to apply appropriate technical and organizational measures to ensure data protection and to take into account privacy considerations in the early stages of system design and organization of business processes.

Rights and Responsibilities: Understanding the Key Postulates of GDPR

“Ignorantia legis non excusat”, so let’s briefly go through key postulates, thus the most important-to-know ones of the Regulations document.

• The postulate of lawfulness, fairness, and transparency states how user data must be processed.
• The postulate of the limit of purposes explains ways of collecting and proceeding of data as only specific, explicit, and legitimate.
• The postulate of minimization sets up the principle of data minimization to what is necessary, according to the purposes for which they are processed.
• The postulate of accuracy describes how all the data should be kept.
• The postulate of storage limitation explains the conditions and time limits of data storage.
• The postulate of security is all about the protection of data against any kind of pirate processing, and, importantly, establishes the obligation to employ suitable technical or organizational safeguards.

You might feel like studying the entire document, so you can find it on the official website of the European Union. But is it really necessary for business owners and managers to dive deeply into what this General Data Protection Regulation is, study the interaction of the Regulations with other acts and laws, and stay up-to-date with official cyber security documents all the time?

Taking Control of Your Data Security

Protocols and rules on the security of user data on the Internet are created not just as a response to cyber threats or breaches with their further unauthorized or piracy use. General Data Protection Regulation is, in fact, the protection of both the user and the business! The question is how to protect your business and bring it into line with modern cyber requirements.

Using IBM Guardium data protection tool is the answer here. The IBM Guardium increases the security of your data and brings it into compliance with the legislative criteria of the Data Protection General Regulations. This tool with its key features provides an overarching framework for supervising significant data assets. The IBM Guardium handles essential data assets across databases, files, cloud, and more. It provides a centralized platform and is configurable for various types of database services.

To Sum Up

They say, awareness means arming. But in light of global digitalization and the rise of cyberterrorism, awareness is not enough. Businesses need the IBM Guardium tool to protect themselves, as well as their data, and to ensure the security of their business online.