GDPR Compliance One Year Later: How’s Your Privacy Posture?

Although preparing for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance was a different challenge than being ready for Y2K, both deadlines had one thing in common—the sky didn’t fall once they came and went. But when it comes to compliance, the deadline never really passed.

If you met the GDPR compliance deadline last May, your work is still ongoing—being prepared for it, like any other privacy regulation, is a continuum of internal readiness. At first glance, GDPR readiness appears to be just another security exercise, but it should have prompted you to think differently about the data you store and process.

Know your data is—in transit and at rest

As much as GDPR is about privacy, it requires you to be transparent in that you must have complete visibility as to where your customer data is stored and where it flows—how does it move across borders within the European Union and beyond? Remember, the data you must keep private is dictated by European citizenship, even if you’re based in Canada, and it’s a living entity. Documenting it for the initial deadline wasn’t enough.

If you’re handling sensitive financial data or Personally Identifiable Information (PII), any documentation and data processing activities must be transparent and demonstrate accountability today and tomorrow. You should always be re-evaluating your current data governance practices and policies as part of your GDPR compliance and improving them as needed.

Plan for the worst

Long before GDPR was even a spark of an idea, data breaches were par for the course. The European privacy legislation is just further impetus for having a clear picture of where your data is most vulnerable.

GDPR requires that you have a disclosure process in place if a breach occurs—affected customers must be informed within 72 hours—although there are a few exceptions. You should be conducting regular fire drills to test the effectiveness of your data breach response procedures, just as you would any disaster recovery plan. This testing can also be applied to breach notification guidelines for the updated Canadian privacy legislation, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).

Do you still have consent?

A key aspect of GDPR, as with PIPEDA, is getting a person’s consent to process their data. Even more importantly, you must be able to honour a request to have that consent withdrawn—that’s why understanding how your data flows is so important. You can’t be certain someone’s data is no longer be used if you don’t know for certain where it’s been collected and stored—it also could have been duplicated. You must also ask for reaffirmation of consent if how you use PII changes.

The consent aspect of privacy regulation further cements the need for pristine record keeping. This includes disclosing to the data subject as to whether any third parties need access to their data to deliver products and services. Your data auditing for GDPR or PIPEDA must reflect any changes to the processing of the data, even backing it up.

Be ready to the roll with the changes

Being prepared for any privacy legislation means maintaining a constant as there will be changes and updates.

GDPR will likely evolve over time, just as PIPEDA has been reviewed updated since being introduced more than 15 years ago. You can’t sit on your laurels for having met last year’s deadline. Privacy regulation compliance should be integrated into your operations. Customer data is rarely static, so your procedure for tracking and protecting it shouldn’t be either.

There are many ways artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning already impact cybersecurity. You can expect that trend to continue in 2024 – both as tools for data protection as well as a threat.

Balancing Cybersecurity Innovation Amid Evolving Threat Landscapes

Even as you implement AI and machine learning into your cybersecurity strategy through the adoption of tools like Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and Managed Detection and Response (MDR), so are threat actors. They will continue to update and evolve their own methodologies and tools to compromise their targets by applying AI and machine learning to how they use ransomware, malware and deepfakes.

With small and medium-sized businesses just much at risk as their large enterprise counterparts, SMBs must take advantage of AI and machine learning as mush possible. AI-directed attacks are expected to rise in 2024 in the form of deepfake technologies that make phishing and impersonation more effective, as well as evolving ransomware and malware.

Deepfake social engineering techniques

Deepfake technologies that leverage AI are especially worrisome, as they can create fake content that spurs employees and organizations to work against their best interests. Hackers can use deepfakes to create massive changes with serious financial consequences, including altering stock prices.

Deepfake social engineering techniques will only improve with the use of AI, increasing the likelihood of data breaches through unauthorized access to systems and more authentic looking phishing messages that are more personalized, and hence, more effective.

Countering Cyber Threats and Harnessing Innovation in 2024

If hackers are keen on leveraging AI and machine learning to defeat your cybersecurity, you must be ready to combat them in equal measure – just as AI and machine learning will create new challenges in 2024, they can also help you bolster your cybersecurity. While regulations are being developed to foster ethical use of AI, threat actors are not likely to follow them.

AI will also affect your cyber insurance as your providers will use it to assess your resilience against cyberattacks and adjust your premium payments accordingly. AI presents an opportunity for you to improve your cybersecurity to keep those insurance costs under control.

Conclusion

There’s a lot of doom being predicted around the growing use of AI and machine learning. And while it does pose a risk to your organization and its sensitive data, you can use it to bolster your cybersecurity even as threat actors leverage AI to up the ante. A managed service provider with a focus on security can help you use AI and machine learning to protect your organization as we head into 2024.

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