Tuesday, February 7, 2017

The Storm on the Horizon: 4 Things to Know in Prepping for General Data Protection Regulation

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Photo: jorisvo/Shutterstock.com

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is still over a year away from being implemented, but many are warning that the regulation will affect more organizations more broadly than initially thought.

At Legalweek’s “Finding a New Safe Harbor: Using Technology and 1LR to Comply With Cross-Border Data Privacy Rules” and “Update on Effects of Brexit on Privacy and Data Protection Considerations” sessions, panelists sought to impart a sense of urgency, focusing not only on the consequences and reach of the regulation, but the unique and complex challenges it will create for legal professionals.
Here is a look at four considerations panelists believe legal will need to take into account to prepare their organizations and teams for the upcoming GDPR reckoning:
1. GDPR Isn’t the Only International Data Regulation—But It’s the Most Far-Reaching
GDPR is one of many worldwide data regulations international e-discovery practitioners and counsel will come across. But the regulation is unprecedented in its scope and its financial repercussions, making it perhaps the most consequential law that legal professionals will face.
While there are many data regulations coming into effect, “they all lack this fundamental set of teeth that the GDPR has,” said Richard Hogg, global InfoGov solutions leader at IBM.
He pointed specifically to the GDPR’s “significant financial penalties” of up to 4 percent of a business’ worldwide revenue, which is levied on any organization failing to adhere to the regulations standards, regardless of “the potential risk to the organization in the market [or] their reputation.”
Many will be at risk of these penalties. The GDPR standards apply to EU citizen data that any company or party, located anywhere in the world, is processing, and how the regulation defines processing is far broader than most realize.
“Processing pretty much means everything,” said Jeff Nass, senior counsel of e-discovery at Boehringer Ingelheim, explaining that almost all data handling or storage processes will fall under this definition.

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