Updated 6/29/17
European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) go into effect in a year on May 25 2018 are you ready?

What Is GDPR

If your initial response is that you are not in Europe and do not need to be concerned about GDPR you might want to step back and review that thought. While it is possible that some organizations may not be affected by GDPR in Europe directly, there might be indirect considerations. For example, GDPR, while focused on Europe, has ties to other initiatives in place or being planned for elsewhere in the world. Likewise unlike earlier regulatory compliance that tended to focus on specific industries such as healthcare (HIPPA and HITECH) or financial (SARBOX, Dodd/Frank among others), these new regulations can be more far-reaching.

Where To Learn More

• GDPR goes into effect May 25 2018 Are You Ready?
• GDPR Compliance Planning for Microsoft Environments (Webinar)

Acronis GDPR Resources

• Acronis Outlines GDPR position

Quest GDPR Resources

• Quest GDPR Compliance resources

Microsoft and Azure Cloud GDPR Resources

• How Microsoft Azure Can Help Organizations Become Compliant with the EU GDPR (Microsoft PDF White Paper)
• GDPR Questions? Azure has answers (Azure Microsoft) )
• Microsoft and GDPR Trustcenter Resources (Microsoft)
• Get GDPR compliant with the Microsoft Cloud (Blogs Microsoft)
• Earning your trust with contractual commitments to the General Data Protection Regulation (Blogs Microsoft)
• Microsoft enterprise products and services and the GDPR (Microsoft)
• Where to Start with GDPR and Microsoft (Microsoft)
• Microsoft related GDPR FAQ (Microsoft)

Do you have or know of relevant GDPR information and resources? Feel free to add them via comments or send us an email, however please watch the spam and sales pitches as they will be moderated.

What This All Means

Now is the time to start planning, preparing for GDPR if you have not done so and need to, as well as becoming more generally aware of it and other initiatives. One of the key takeaways is that while the word compliance is involved, there is much more to GDPR than just compliance as we have seen in the part. With GDPR and other initiatives data protection becomes the focus including privacy, protect, preserve, secure, serve as well as manage, have insight, awareness along with associated reporting.

Ok, nuff said (for now...).

Cheers
Gs