Four in five IT managers unaware of upcoming regulation

New research from data recovery specialists, Kroll Ontrack, and data erasure experts, Blancco shows that more than four out of five (81 per cent) IT managers across Europe are unfamiliar with the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The GDPR aims to unify data protection laws to meet the challenges of the digital age and in particular, strengthen the protection of online personal data. When enacted into law, it will require all businesses handling EU residents’ data to delete personal information on request or when it is no longer required by the organisation and encourage the use of auditable deletion procedures for companies processing personal data. As such, the research shows that 57 per cent of the 660 IT managers surveyed believe they will be directly affected by the regulation.

Kroll Ontrack and Blancco caution that non-compliant businesses could receive significant fines, and are at risk of large scale reputational damage. Data breach sanctions will range from €250,000 or 0.5% of annual worldwide turnover for less serious breaches, up to €100,000,000 or 5% of annual worldwide turnover for more serious infractions.

According to the research, three out of five (61 per cent) IT managers said that their organisations have not taken measures to achieve compliance with the pending regulation, with more than half (55 per cent) failing to review and adapt data destruction policies. A further quarter (25 per cent) admitted to not having a process in place to deal with data destruction.

“Organisations still have a great deal of work to do to ensure they comply with the data protection guidelines of the new GDPR regulation. Any business holding personal data on EU residents, be it online or offline, will have to abide by the new rules” says Paul Le Messurier, Programme and Operations Manager at Kroll Ontrack.

“One solution to this problem is to consult a certified, full service data destruction and erasure provider to assist in the secure deletion of unrequired data. Both Kroll Ontrack and Blancco offer the necessary tools and services to securely erase data from company servers as well as any other devices such as mobiles and tablets, ensuring that data does not fall in to the wrong hands.”

Kim Väisänen, Managing Director of Blancco commented: “Blancco’s Data Erasure Management (DEM) solution can help organisations achieve compliance with the coming regulation. DEM is the most practical way to avoid fines and demonstrate compliance to auditors and also assure customers that their data will be removed when required.

“Blancco provides secure DEM across the whole asset lifecycle for individual files and folders, laptops, flash media, mobile devices, servers and the cloud. Each erasure provides a time-stamped, tamper-proof certificate for a comprehensive audit trail.”