Corporates gear up for GDPR deadline

Chennai: With Friday being the D-day for compliance with the data privacy regulation introduced by the EU, numerous corporates are rushing to make sure their businesses are compliant. From seeking expert advice from security companies to getting their ground level employees trained, a mammoth task has been cut out for corporates that have exposure to the EU region.

For cybersecurity companies, it is a dual task. “Not only do we need to assist our clients, we also need to make sure we are GDPR compliant,” said Meerah Rajavel, Global CIO, Forcepoint. The company started thinking about GDPR implications close to two years back and decided to use their own products. From detecting breaches to forensic tools and user behaviour analytics, the security company has various offerings.

Rajavel says GDPR is not a CIO/CISO issue alone. “You need to have a data protection officer. You need to have co-ordination between IT, legal and risk teams. You also need to partner with HR because data privacy can also be a cultural matter. You need to ensure you protect the company without violating individual privacy,” she said.

Security companies have been flushed with training requests streaming in from corporates. “Most want a one-day awareness training on what GDPR is all about. India is not geared up to dwell deep into advanced concepts such as consent, lawful basis, cookie policy, privacy by design etc. We often end up having a lot of discussions on how to send mails post GDPR, what is opt-in, how to use opt-out, collection of consent on website etc,” said Manoj Jain, founder and CEO, Riskpro India.

Security company InfySec has seen a 3x jump in training requests. Veena Nimmagadda, project manager, InfySec said,” We have company in banking, BPO space sending in employees for training. Mostly, it is employees in the operations and product manager level so that they are aware of processes.”

Some have taken to online courses to understand the basic of GDPR. LawSkills.in, part of the Manupatra group has seen several takers for its online course on GDPR. Jain of Riskpro India is also of the opinion that GDPR trainings online, e learning could do well during the next 12 months and has scope and the company intends to build this soon.