GDPR is coming, who is going to be affected?

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16th Apr '18 by whitmad

4 comments 1828 reads

GDPR is the EU's General Data Protection Regulation which comes into force on 25th May 2018

Here is an interesting article that explains what it is, and the impact it should have on companies' use of personal data.

https://www.cennydd.com/writing/a-techies-rough-guide-to-gdpr

The question this brings to my mind, is: Which companies are going to find their business models adversely affected? These might include data brokers, digital advertising services, social media, etc.

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About the Author

Whitmad

Premium Member

4 comments

Carcosa

17th Apr '18

In terms of share price activity I don't see it having any effect at all. This is a relatively minor regulation compared to all the other financial regulations that companies adhere too. It's implementation is relatively straight forward too.

Maybe one or two companies will hype it up to generate incremental revenues such as https://www.investegate.co.uk/d4t4-solutions-plc--d4t4-/rns/celebrus-delivers-self-service-solution-for-gdpr/201802070900021116E/ but overall I see it as a non-event for any share holder.

timarr

17th Apr '18

On the negative side companies that get breached can be fined up to 4% of global annual turnover. So, for instance, the breach that AA (LON:AA.) suffered last year would have taken out half of their free cash flow. In their recent breach at FirstGroup (LON:FGP) the fine for that could have wiped out their profits.

Broadly the fines come in two categories - up to 4% for mishandling consumer consent and misusing their data and up to 2% for a data breach. The fines are also extraterritorial - so for instance the Equifax breach last year included about 100,000 EU citizens - that would have opened them up to a $70 million fine.

One of the most common attacks is that the attackers will use username and password combinations harvested from other attacks. The only way to effectively protect against this is to ensure your customer can't do this - which basically means some form of two factor authentication. I'd expect to see a lot of companies marketing this type of solution. Ironically Facebook already have it implemented ...

I'm sure we're going see a lot of ambulance chasing going on, but identifying clear winners isn't easy, not yet anyway.

timarr

Flackwell

17th Apr '18

For the sake of balance - the key phrase is 'up to' and it has already been flagged that this would only be for the most exceptional cases

timarr

17th Apr '18

To be precise it's about:

How long the infringement has been going on and how significant it is;

Whether it was intentional or negligent;
The mitigation actions taken by the organisation to support the breached customers;
The compliance measures already taken;
Previous infringements;
Whether they co-operate with the regulator;
The types of personal data involved;
How the regulator found out about the breach and whether it was self-notified.

At the moment the actual action to be taken is theoretical, but most of my clients are taking this extremely seriously, if only because executives and data controllers can go to jail for extreme compliance breaches.

The other undereported part of this is that GDPR allows affected individuals or groups to sue for damages, so the level of fines may well be irrelevant in the greater scheme of things. As I say, I imagine the ambulance chasers are warming up their engines ... :)

timarr

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GDPR is coming, who is going to be affected?

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Whitmad

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