Data Protection Regulation

In May of 2018 the landscape for data rights underwent a significant change that affected business worldwide who deal with any European citizen. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect. In 2021 the landscape for the UK continued to evolve with the introduction of the UKGDPR.

This represents a significant challenge to business. The GDPR and UKGDPR are only the begining as further legislation in some US states (such as California), and the countries of Australia and China, relating to electronic business (specifically e-commerce and electronic trade) have occurred.

Addressing the concerns brought about by these changes to legislative rights can be challenging for any business. Many of those rights will have a fundamental place in how we also use security of electronic and physical data in our businesses.

Having a strategy to deal with the different levels of data protection may be out of the reach of many organisations. Do you have a solution for legislative changes? Do you know how they affect you? You need to act to make sure you are compliant with this legislation and to ensure your business processes are acceptable and affordable.

Shadowcat Systems has many years of experience in dealing with access and storing of data. We write about changes in data rules and we can help your organisation move towards a better data strategy. We can help you to do a strategic analysis of your organisation and identify the steps you need to take to mitigate risk and observe legislative requirements.

Shadowcat doesn’t offer a single-solution or claim to make you any percentage compliant with legislation. In is about what you have to do as individual organisations, there is no one list of things to do to ensure compliance. The legislation changes and your specific requirements will be determined by CoC authorities and trade bodies.

Our mission isn’t about insuring you against risk but evolving your organisation to observe best practice which should make you compliant with legislation. We believe companies are individual and that our best role is to help them implement a solution that matches their business. There is no one true way, we treat your organisation as an individual as that is how the legislation will see you.

You should ask yourself

  • Do you know where your data is?
  • Do you audit how it is collected, transmitted and archived?
  • Do you follow the changing best practices for securing your data?
  • Do you know how your data and systems are secured?
  • Do you know how to find out what those best practices are?

Blogs about Data Protection

You can find our most recent writing about data Protection from our blog below

In regards to business activities you have another vector for potential data legislation headaches. That can be a security threat, data processing that is out-of-scope (or in breach of rights or consent) or even uncertainty about where your data goes and what actions are performed on it. This can lead to all sorts of problems.
I asked them if they knew the devices that were used to access the data? When they accessed the data? What security was on each device? I also asked if they used simple security such as two factor auth everywhere? Crucially I asked if they logged who had access? When they had access? What they had access to?
A digital existence, often related to the digital footprint people leave as they navigate our heavily inter-connected existence, is like a trail left by a modern day net-running Hansel and Gretel in the cyber forests. When we click "accept" or "submit" or other interactive elements; scroll through a feed filled with adverts and hyperlinks with their insistent calls to like and dislike; buy a quirky object online; save a link to a note-app or repost to our own feeds; we drop a digital breadcrumb to say where we have been and what we did there.