New EU Data Protection Law to bring a revolution

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) strengthens the data rights of EU residents and harmonizes data protection laws across all member states, making it identical.

On the same day, within a hour of the implementation of the new privacy law, Google and Facebook faced fines of up to $9.3B. This could potentially add up to a $4.88 billion fine for Google's parent company, Alphabet and $1.63 billion for each of Facebook, and its Instagram and WhatsApp services, if European regulators agree with Noyb.eu and decide to fine the companies the full amount, the CNET report said.

GDPR is to make it easier and cheaper for companies to comply with data protection rules. The act is going to strengthen the data rights of EU residents and harmonizes data protection laws across all member states, making it identical. It increases the potential fines organisations face for misusing data, and makes it easier for people to discover what information organisations have in them. The EU believes this will collectively save companies €2.3 billion a year.

With the enforcement of the new law, any organisation providing goods and services in the EU, be it a BFSI, manufacturing or IT/ITeS services unit or pharma unit, will come under GDPR. However, many firms in India are still not ready for compliance with the new law which will cover all entities doing business in EU. GDPR not only impacts Indian companies but also global firms who are managing PII data for EU employees ,vendors and businesses.

GDPR, and the many regional variants around the globe represents a fundamental shift in the way the WORLD will be conducting business. The impact post GDPR will be intense in the way data is treated globally by the companies to safeguard data and systems in an integrated world.

A question that arises is how many countries in EU are complying to the new data protection law? The truth is that many countries are coming up with their own data protection laws. Like recently Mauritius has come up with its own law, whereas India is also working on this front.

The implementation of GDPR has also made data protection an issue in contract negotiations as firms argue about how to divvy up responsibility for any data breach. Less than half of the 28 member states have adopted national laws to implement GDPR, rest would do so in a week or so.