8 In 10 Consumers Mistrust Data Will Be Deleted Post-GDPR

With GDPR finally coming into play this Friday, Veritas has revealed research which highlights two in five UK consumers are already planning to take advantage of their data protection rights, and 79% don’t believe that organisations will be able to find and/or delete all of the personal data that is held on them. Tamzin Evershed, Senior Director and Global Privacy Lead at Veritas commented below. 

Tamzin Evershed, Senior Director and Global Privacy Lead at Veritas:

“With the deadline for GDPR compliance finally here, businesses must be able to demonstrate that they are managing and protecting personal data in a compliant way and be able to meet requests from individuals exercising their new and improved rights over their personal data. According to our latest research, two in five (40 per cent) UK consumers are already planning to take advantage of their data protection rights within the next six months, yet the majority (79%) don’t believe that organisations will be able to find and/or delete all of the personal data that is held on them.

“Under the new laws, requests from individuals to exercise their rights over their personal data must be answered within one month. Companies that have failed to prepare properly will face difficulty meeting this timeframe. To have a chance of meeting the timelines for data subjects’ requests, businesses have no real choice but to embrace technology that helps them to locate personal data quickly and accurately across different platforms, search through it and manage execution. Very few businesses have full insight into all the data they hold, and so employing tools that can help them locate and manage it is critical. Businesses that fail to recognise the importance of responding effectively and efficiently to data subjects’ requests will be putting their brand loyalty, reputation and profits at stake. Failure to meet a data subject’s request is a breach of the law that is obvious to the requester, and is therefore much more likely to lead to complaints to the Information Commissioner, court action and negative publicity.”