The rise of the cloud means that many European enterprise organisations are struggling to stay GDPR compliant with an average of more than 600 apps in use.
A multitude of checklists, guides and whitepapers have helped inform businesses about how to avoid falling foul of the new European data regulation when it comes into force on May 25th.
However data is often not stored in one place thanks to the rise of cloud-based app usage.
It is thought that organisations underestimate this figure by 90 per cent as they don’t take into account, for example, use of programs such as Dropbox or WeTransfer for file sharing.
BusinessCloud is holding a breakfast event on the topic next week – ‘The golden rules of GDPR’ – where speakers will offer practical examples of how to make the most of the new opportunities, from cleansing databases to building trust.
Data fragmentation creates an issue for anyone trying to ensure GDPR compliance within an organisation as they are unaware of large swathes of data types held within such platforms.
“It may be worth consulting or hiring a GDPR Data Protection Officer to ensure the correct level of controls are in place and remain relevant,” said James Smith, head of architecture and innovation at Cloud Technology Solutions.
“The bottom line is that tech businesses need to understand what PI data they hold, why they are holding it, how long they need to hold it for and how it’s being managed.
“This must be communicated to customers and staff and, where appropriate, mechanisms must be put in place to remove the data should it be requested.
“Technology is not the only part of the solution. Policy and technology complement each other.”
Centralisation of data can be a major step forward for GDPR. CTS says products like G Suite and Office 365 allow tech companies to provide good business tools for their teams while also having the benefit of providing centralised controls, reports, alerts and visibility of the data being used across the organisation.
This minimises the number of apps, contracts and data fragmentation while also providing users with powerful tools to get the job done.