The enforcement deadline for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has come and gone, and many organizations are maintaining all the work they did to achieve initial compliance. After nearly two years of preparation time, business leaders all over let out a sigh of relief on May 25, 2018.
Unfortunately, yet understandably, many organizations around the globe still struggle just to skirt potentially devastating GDPR penalties and fines due to the sheer number and variety of requirements associated with the regulation.
If you are still feeling the weight of the adoption, implementation and maintenance of GDPR, you are in good and plentiful company.
How Are Data Leaders Managing GDPR Requirements Now That It Is Live?
The most diligent CISOs and CDOs continue to do their best to keep everything running smoothly as an ongoing responsibility, along with any additional duties they need to manage. The fact is that no one ever thought achieving and maintaining compliance for this regulation was going to be simple. It was brimming with complex challenges from the start.
No matter how up-to-speed an organization’s GDPR team is when it comes to compliance, CISOs and their teams have considered it one of the most pressing data-related topics for at least the past few years.
Organizational leadership still strives to find efficient ways to monitor this behemoth EU-based regulation package without sacrificing one of the other crucial areas of cybersecurity.
One key strategy that CISOs find most effective in maintaining peak compliance is by tapping a top-notch Data Protection Officer (DPO) and ensuring that their employees are all on board with the vital importance of GDPR compliance and how to best achieve it.
5 Technology Solutions that Help Cybersecurity Experts and Teams Stay on Top of GDPR Compliance
While GDPR compliance takes a hands-on and human-centered approach to a large degree, there are several aspects of the regulation, as well as the process of tending to it, that benefit from focused technology solutions.
Explore the following five technology solutions that can help you and your team streamline your approach to maintaining peak GDPR compliance.
1. A GDPR-Compliant Web Browser
Today’s office employees spend a large portion of their time at work online, so it is crucial to ensure your GDPR compliance while everyone is performing research or working on the company website. It is important to consider the possibility that web page owners have not complied with the regulation, leaving their website vulnerable to infractions. Hence, your business may then be at risk as well.
Authentic8, Inc. has built a solution for everyone. The company software firm’s Silo release is the first web browser that is fully GDPR-compliant. The browser isolation aspect of Silo protects end users handling EU customer or employee data against all web-based and web-borne vulnerabilities, risks and threats. This highly specialized browser lets you centrally manage and audit the web access data which are covered by GDPR.
2. Log Management Capabilities
For GDPR, traceability is a key component to mitigating damage caused by a data breach. Log management technology can help companies provide relevant and sufficient evidence, as well as a good overview of how people have handled and maintained data before, during and after a data breach event.
Log management has become the data tracing standard in both the payment card and healthcare sectors, as it has become a security requirement for both PCI DSS and HIPAA.
Learn more about the Key Differences Between PCI and GDPR.
With this technology, the log is an automatic and time-stamped record of a specific data-related event. It provides insights to companies monitoring access and offers information into how users behave and how an application works when it goes live. Just as importantly, logs uncover abnormal system activity and detect intrusions.
Given the importance of GDPR and all that is at stake, as far as compliance, log management capabilities are invaluable, providing you the evidence you need to clear your organization of GDPR violations.
3. Tokenization and Pseudonymization
Pseudonymization is one of the requirements to achieve GDPR compliance, which dictates that sensitive data is not allowed to be directly assigned to a specific person. Tokenization is an effective way of complying with this mandate since it relocates and replaces sensitive data with an anonymous token while the personal data is stored locally.
Used in many key industries, tokenization is most frequently found in the payment industry, allowing employees to handle large volumes of card data.
4. GRC Solutions
Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) solutions are increasingly sought-after tools in various industries when it comes to managing an ever-mounting stack of compliance regulations.
Many times, GRC solutions cover several critical GDPR requirements, including log management and tokenization, giving clients excellent value.
5. Privacy Impact Assessment Programs
GDPR takes privacy to new and daunting levels, causing organizations to continually weigh the potential impact of their business decisions regarding their users’ data privacy.
There are many available self-service tools, combined with role-based templates, that help organizations prioritize privacy. OneTrust is one vendor that can help you understand your business’s privacy risks, which may stem from geographic expansions, mergers and acquisitions and product launch activities.
You may also reach out to an auditing firm to establish a baseline privacy impact assessment (PIA) to give you a strong starting point.
Do You Need Additional Technology Solution Information or Professional Consultation to Ensure GDPR Compliance?
If you need more information about any of the technology discussed above, or if we can help you tighten up your GDPR approach to ensure complete and consistent GDPR compliance, our GDPR specialists at I.S. Partners, LLC. are here to help.
Our team understands how time-consuming it is for diligent business leaders to take on one more regulation, but we all know the monetary penalties and reputational risks against your organization that accompany GDPR non-compliance.
Call us today at 215-675-1400, send us a message or request a quote, so we can talk about your GDPR needs.
