Countdown To Compliance: One Year To Go Until GDPR Enforcement

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a sweeping privacy and data protection regulation in the European Union (EU) and will be enforced from May 25, 2018, replacing Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC. The GDPR aims to protect both individuals' fundamental rights to protection of data about them and the free flow of such personal data, as well as to harmonize the existing patchwork of EU member state implementations of the Directive. In doing so, the GDPR significantly expands the application of EU data protection law.

The GDPR imposes significant new obligations on organizations that control or process relevant personal data and introduces new rights and protections for EU data subjects. In addition, the GDPR has extended the territorial scope of the EU data protection regime beyond EU based businesses. For example, many organizations who may not have been covered by the Directive previously because they do not have operations in the EU will now be covered