Last May 2018, the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force.
The law's main objective is to protect personal data and the way organizations process, store, and destroy it.
If you are a European citizen, since May last year, companies that want to use your data must do so with your mandatory consent. Additionally, you have the right to know at all times what data the company is using about you, how they are processing it, for what purpose, and who is responsible for it.
A regulation that affects all European Union countries and allows the implementation of new tools to control data. Furthermore, with the entry into force of this regulation, more rights have been achieved, special care in IT maintenance for companies regarding security, and greater power granted to data protection agencies.
GDPR applications and rights
The European Union General Data Protection Regulation will apply to the following organizations:
-Those that have a physical presence in at least one European Union member state
-Those that process or store data about individuals residing in the European Union
-Companies that use third-party services that process or store data about individuals residing in the European Union
For its part, the rights established by the new European regulation are:
-Right to be informed
-Right of access
-Right to rectification
-Right to be forgotten
-Right to restrict processing
-Right to data portability
-Right to object
Right regarding automated decision-making and profiling
Any company or organization that fails to comply with these rights could face fines of up to 10 million euros or 2% of its global annual turnover. Whether it is a computer company, service company, or any other field of activity.
Among these rights, it should be noted that any citizen can request the company to delete their personal data when it is no longer valid. The right of access is also of interest, as you can ask companies to confirm whether your data is being processed, where, and for what purpose.
Additionally, thanks to the right to portability, you can retrieve the data being processed automatically to transfer it to another controller.
The new consent for the use of our data and cybersecurity
One of the particularities of this new regulation is that the request for data consent is completely different from what we had until a year ago. Now we no longer have to read those unintelligible paragraphs; instead, companies are obliged to clearly explain how they will use our data. Many of them have had to use virtual desktops to adapt to these new measures.
This new European regulation has also brought about the safeguarding of business cybersecurity. Without a doubt, the improvement in transparency allows the customer to trust the brand much more.
But at the same time, compliance with the regulations leads to an improvement in business competitiveness in terms of security. The fact of having to handle user data with greater care and detail increases security processes in companies.
If we know that companies are going to process our data, we want them to do so in compliance with current regulations. And this means that cybersecurity is more than present in every company, as it will have to adopt the most appropriate measures to minimize risks. It is for this reason that many national companies have turned to purchasing Fortinet firewalls.
Not without reason, if companies process special user data, they will have to take a series of additional security measures when preventing cyberattack threats. This has led companies to demand more cybersecurity professionals to comply with the GDPR.
Jobs such as computer security specialist, information security analyst, network security engineer, security engineer, or application security engineer have become among the most in-demand in the last year.
Compliance with this new regulation, in short, is essential for any company. And not only for the aesthetic and professional image impact it may have on customers, but also for the fact of keeping the company's own cybersecurity safe.
It is true that this new regulation has made the adaptation work of companies in the last year somewhat complex. But, as we can see, it is also causing companies to place special emphasis on their own business security. An additional advantage that will help them have a more professional image towards customers.
