What is the GDPR and How Can You Prepare?

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the world’s first attempt at implementing big data compliance regulation, and it seems to be inspiring some fear throughout the compliance industry. Now that GDPR has come to combat the uptick in cyberattacks, compliance has to evolve.

To help businesses march into this new digital era, LogRhythm Labs has been working hard to develop a sound and efficient strategy to drive companies toward success. Rather than providing duplicate alarms and reports for you to dig through, LogRhythm will be presenting the first SIEM Automation Suite for GDPR compliance.

With LogRhythm’s dedicated SIEM Automation Suite, you will soon be able to implement technology-focused GDPR practices, policies, and procedures in a unified manner.

What is the GDPR?

The GDPR was created with the intention of strengthening and unifying data protection for the entirety of the European Union (EU). It replaces the Data Protection Directive 96/46, which was enacted before the rise of the internet and cloud monitoring.

The GDPR aims to make compliance easier by providing a single set of EU-wide rules. Failure to meet these new standards can result in damaging fines. The GDPR was adopted on April 27th, 2016. It will be enforceable beginning May 25, 2018.

Businesses not operating in the EU should still expect changes in their compliance requirements and practices. Regardless of location, if you process EU personal data, you must comply with GDPR regulations. U.S. companies should bear in mind that thanks to regulations from the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Transportation, not honoring GDPR guidelines could be considered an international offense.

Why the Concern?

For those who work in the world of compliance, GDPR has been floating around office discussions with an ominous tone. If I were to paraphrase what I hear about the incoming of GPDR from coworkers and customers, reactions sound something like: “Avoiding fines will be impossible!” or “We don’t have tools for this sort of thing!” Most of these panicked reactions come from those in the risk, governance, or auditing communities. I have even heard the GDPR be equated to the “next Y2K.”

The audit and compliance communities are frantically shuffling about to understand new regulations that require a superior understanding of big data. The industry-wide lack of employees with a technical background and knowledge of big data creates a situation in which most organizations are unprepared to keep up with the GDPR compliance regulations.

When it comes to the audit industry, change is often associated with fines. Controls can inhibit and restrict change, making compliance regulators previously perceive change as being bad and threatening.

With GDPR being the first true, big data compliance regulation, a drastic amount of change is required for compliance organizations to keep up with the future. Change might seem threatening to the way your business operates, but the GDPR is manageable with preparation and the proper resources.

How Can You Keep Up with Big Data?

With compliance regulations becoming so intimately tied to cybersecurity, you need to have a deeper understanding of what data does for GDPR. Take a look at a following select GDPR articles:

  • Article 17: Right to erasure
  • Article 18: Right to restriction of processing
  • Article 35: Data protection impact assessment

Even at a glance, it is apparent that these articles demand a fairly advanced understanding of the most basic aspects of a company’s network. Businesses must ensure that the rights of individuals and their data are enforced and managed on a constant basis.

Compliance and audit standards implemented a decade ago, such as the Data Protection Directive 96/46, did not equip auditors to be fully prepared for these new regulations. To this end, LogRhythm Labs been working hard to help you prepare for the GDPR.

LogRhythm’s GDPR Module

Security intelligence and event management (SIEM) technologies can be applied to make GDPR less intimidating and simplify its integration with existing compliance regulations.

At its core, GDPR is designed to improve the data protection of individuals in Europe, which also impacts international business for all companies doing business with the EU. LogRhythm contains a slew of valuable features that have been applied to address GDPR requirements, such as data masking, user blacklisting, GeoIP tracking, network monitoring, and more. Paired with case management and web console dashboards that can be used to track live user activity, LogRhythm’s AI Engine can help ensure priority events do not get missed.

LogRhythm’s GDPR module delivers strategies and approaches for managing data. The module will empower you to kick start your compliance program without the need to come up with these strategies on your own. LogRhythm has taken care of the SIEM planning, so you don’t have to.

A Unified Future in Compliance

With so many compliance and mandates already present in businesses today, provisioning for yet another regulation just adds further complication to the existing convolution. In acknowledgement of this, LogRhythm Labs is embracing the need for change alongside an evolving industry.

Compliance is already complicated, and there is already enough data floating around environments to warrant:

  • More efficiency
  • Fewer duplicates across modules
  • Drastically improved threat module support
  • More effective data segregation
  • The ability to easily unify future compliance modules, without losing proper data segregation

LogRhythm’s GDPR compliance module will support future compliance mandates and help your business be in par with regulations to avoid costly fines. Perhaps even more significant, the GDPR module will help keep your network and data safe from a cyberattack.

To learn more about steps you can take to prepare for the GDPR, check out our GDPR white paper.

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