GDPR Compliance Measures That Every Company Should Consider When Moving to The Cloud

More and more companies are moving to the cloud every day, and the trend does not seem to slow down any time soon. In fact, according to a Gartner survey, 55% of large enterprises will have successfully implemented an all-in cloud SaaS strategy by 2025. Though there could be numerous reasons to do so, some of the biggest reasons are the low cost of storage, improved security, and accessibility. 

But only considering the benefits will not be helpful when moving to the cloud. Companies need to consider other aspects, such as privacy and compliance. One of the key privacy and compliance regulations is the General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR of the European Union (EU). It mandates all companies to safeguard the data they hold from a data leak, data loss, or unlawful usage and poses hefty fines on companies for nonadherence. Some essential GDPR requirements for the cloud data management are:

  • Retention
  • Data ownership
  • Data portability
  • Risk management
  • Privacy by design

Effective Retention

According to GDPR, personal data must not be retained for longer than necessary for the stated purpose. Therefore, retention periods must be set even for the data on the cloud, and they must be deleted once the period has expired. Furthermore, cloud backups should also be taken into consideration when defensibly deleting data altogether.

Ownership of the Data

GDPR also states that the controller of the data is responsible for safeguarding it. Therefore, as a controller, the company must preserve control and ownership of data with the cloud service provider.

At times, the cloud service providers need to store the data in a different country. Therefore, the company must also affirm that it retains the ownership of the transmitted data under the laws of the host nations.

Data Portability

Under GDPR, people in the EU have the right to port their data to a different controller. As a controller of the data, the company must be able to access all the data related to the data subject from the cloud, send it to a different controller, and completely delete it from the cloud when needed.

Risk Management

GDPR requires companies to implement strict risk management policies and assess the business functions for potential risks. That makes all third-party vendors, including the cloud service providers, eligible for potential risk assessment. Therefore, the cloud storage and the cloud service provider must be in the company’s risk management policy.

Privacy by Design

According to GDPR, the company must ensure that data privacy compliance is maintained by design. Therefore, the company must ensure that the architecture of the cloud has GDPR compliant technology and security measures to safeguard personal data.

Breach Notification

In case all the above measures fail, the GDPR mandates that it is notified about the data breach within 72 hours. Therefore, the company must have a breach notification agreement with the cloud service provider that requires it to report the data breach.

Conclusion

Enterprise data migration to the cloud can benefit companies of all sizes, but the real benefits will only start showing if they do it responsibly. Furthermore, merely having a secure cloud archiving solution will not help with compliance laws and regulations. To be compliant, the company needs proper compliance management software in place.

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