As Europe edges toward new data-privacy legislation, tech companies like Google and Facebook won’t be the only corporate entities that will have to exercise greater care in handling data. The Data Protection Regulation that the European Commission, European Parliament and Council of the European Union are currently working toward finalizing by the end of this year will introduce a plethora of issues that will affect how corporations, as well as their risk management advisors and data analysts, use data. And executives at multinationals doing business in E.U. countries or employing citizens from those countries will no longer be able to skirt rigorous policies and procedures around data privacy and protection.
In the wake of the National Security Agency eavesdropping scandal in the U.S., the proposed regulation will, if nothing else, complicate how corporate entities and their advisors analyze data for marketing, fraud prevention, responses to litigation and investigation, etc. At the very least, obtaining consent from employees to use their data in compliance with the new E.U. standards could be exceptionally costly and difficult.
