January 2018 EBN Breakfast Presentation about the EU’s new data protection regulation: more rights for individuals, massive challenges for businesses
In January, the EBN invited its members to learn more about the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, a sweeping new package of rules that will overhaul how companies and organizations in the EU deal with personal data. The presenters, Aurelija Rutkauskaitė, attorney at the legal firm Triniti, and Stein Ove Sektnan, managing director at customer relations management firm SuperOffice, acquainted the attendees of the monthly EBN business breakfast with the challenges of meeting the GDPR and offered tips how to deal with them.
The GDPR, which comes into effect on 25 May, is geared towards protecting the privacy of individuals and will replace all national personal data protection regulations. Countries like Lithuania may have had strict rules, but compliance with the GDPR will see stricter enforcement. This will affect every business, non-profit or public sector organisation that collects personal data about individuals, be it their employees, clients or associates. Ms. Rutkauskaitė says that compliance with the regulation will require considerable resources and likely outside advice from legal and IT specialists. All organizations will need to think how to process data in a transparent, confidential and manageable way, says Mr. Sektnan.