Impact On UK Data Protection

There are a raft of things that are now up in the air following the Brexit vote last week. One of the most pressing talking points for businesses is the issue of EU regulations, which may fall away following the Brexit. The new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) falls squarely into this bracket. To highlight the data protection angle, security experts commented below.

Jason Howells, EMEA Director, MSP Solutions at Barracuda:

“To paraphrase Donald Rumsfield: there are known knowns and there are known unknowns. When it comes to Brexit, the principle around the new EU data protection law, the GDPR, falls in to the known knowns. Most companies who have dealings with EU have been diligently preparing for GDPR. Just because the vote ‘leave’ campaign won, does not change things related to this new legislation. GDPR is going to affect businesses offering any type of service to the EU market, regardless of whether that business stores or processes data on EU soil. For UK businesses, the bottom line is that whilst we’ve spent the last five years trying to globalise data protection regulation, we’re now facing another layer of complexity to avoid isolation.”

Simon Moffatt, EMEA Director, Advanced Customer Engineering at ForgeRock:

“It is absolutely within the UK public’s interest to ensure that businesses continue to prepare for the GDPR, not just to enable the movement of and access to EU citizen’s data, but also to ensure that the people they serve have the same right to privacy. In fact, the UK, as a major cyber security nation, can continue to deliver guidance in becoming one of the leading authorities in terms of the security and privacy of personal data.”