How the cloud can help your business get compliant with GDPR

However, amid wide-ranging business concerns is a new piece of legislation affecting personal data which could potentially have similar aftershocks - and that’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which will apply to the UK from May 25, 2018.

GDPR is intended to strengthen data protection for individuals within the EU while imposing restrictions on the transfer of personal data outside the European Union, to third countries or international organisations.

It would be a mistake for any data controller or processer to assume that because they know and adhere to the existing Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) that it will be similar and therefore no additional compliance is required.

GDPR will have a set of new and different requirements and for any organisation which has day-to-day responsibility for data protection, it’s imperative that they monitor the regulations and ensure that their organisation can be compliant-ready ahead of next year.

Compliance requires investment as well as specialist knowledge and many business leaders are looking at how the cloud will be able to help with their data storage, protection and management and meet GDPR compliance as well.

GDPR is the biggest challenge facing data management in the last 20 years, it’s no understatement to say that it is presenting business leaders with a headache.

A survey from analyst firm Gartner earlier this year showed, that  around half of those affected by the legislation, whether in the EU or outside - will not be in full compliance when the regulations take effect.

The message coming forward is that the cloud is the preferred option to help with the upgrading of data security practices and data protection standards in line with the regulations.

As the May 2018 deadline nears ever closer, moving data to the cloud can help ease the burden faced by senior IT leaders, many of whom see GDPR compliance as their top priority.

As a leading cloud services provider, we are increasingly being asked about GDPR considerations from concerned clients migrating to the cloud.

We believe that the task of migrating people’s data such as emails, contacts, files, calendar and tasks over to Office365 will make compliance easier for organisations.

Having migrated over six million people across 57 countries, we are able to ease organisations through the process with zero downtime loss.

During any cloud migration process, the most important result, particularly with the need for GDPR compliance ahead, is that data sovereignty is maintained and full control with comprehensive reporting is provided.

After migration, comes management and it’s the next big part of the cloud which is vital to GDPR compliance to address security and data protection.

This is why we introduced our own cloud management software, CloudManager. Launched at Microsoft Inspire 2017 – the largest global event for Microsoft partners - in Washington DC in July, CloudManager is a public cloud management platform which gives organisations and service providers the ability to control multi-tenant Office 365 users in a very intuitive and cost-effective way.

It can be used by organisations and enterprises of different sizes and so far is helping companies to significantly lower daily administration costs and Microsoft Ticket escalations.

More importantly, it is particularly beneficial for large-scale operations with a mobile and fast-growing changing workforce which has need for substantial licences while it deals with the ebb and flow of its workers.

With the need for increased security, CloudManager offers bulk transaction processing, advanced hierarchical management capability and role based access control which again helps with companies to comply with increasingly stringent access controls required by GDPR.

From working with world-class organisations such as LinkedIn, YMCA (Canada) and the University of Bristol, CloudMigrator365 listened and learnt and developed the software which addresses the cloud management needs of enterprises today and into the future.

By providing software such as CloudMigrator365 and CloudManager which help organisations meet GDPR and get ready for May 2018’s deadline, we are growing our business rapidly. It has also lead to a significant expansion of our current partnership network which already includes multinational technology company IBM and international professional services company Capita.

GDPR compliance before May 25, 2018 isn’t an option for those doing business with EU countries, it’s a necessity. Organisations will need to look across their business and manage their data holistically to ensure compliance and avoid sanctions. With GDPR coming into effect in a matter of months, the time to act is now.