Survey results about the impact of the GDPR and the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield published

4. August 2016

Recently, the IAPP (International Association for Privacy Professionals) published the results of a survey carried out by Baker & McKenzie regarding the perspectives and expectations that Privacy Professionals have about the changing legislative scope in the field of Data Protection.

The participants were senior managers and individuals involved in the fields of data protection and data security that belonged to multi-national organizations, government agencies, regulatory bodies or policy and academic institutions.

Most of the respondents acknowledge that both, GDPR and Privacy Shield, imply that organizations have to implement an action-plan accordingly. This will imply higher costs and efforts. Furthermore, 70% of the respondents stated that the most difficult requirements of the GDPR to comply with are consent, data mapping and international data transfers. A 45% stated that their organization does not have adequate tools currently to be compliant and implementing the required tools may be involved with significant costs.

Moreover, the majority of the participants recommended organizations to self-certify as soon as possible, so that they would still have nine months to make contractors also comply with the principles. Also, they believe that the Privacy Shield should be complemented by other mechanisms to transfer personal data such as Binding Corporate Rules or Standard Contractual Clauses.