Herbert Smith Freehills is delighted to announce the launch of a multi-disciplinary General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) series, with various cross-practice cross-border briefings and webinars to help clients successfully navigate the GDPR and other data protection and cyber security related matters in the run up to 25 May 2018 and beyond.
With less than nine months to go before the GDPR comes into force in the UK and across Europe, the run up to May 2018 is set to be a busy period for organisations preparing for compliance. Each briefing and webinar will be written with a particular key business function in mind, placing the spotlight on what the firm is seeing and hearing in the market alongside our practical experience of dealing with the challenges of compliance. In our first briefing in the series, we take a look at the anatomy of a GDPR compliance programme. Click here to access the briefing.
The firm has also launched a new GDPR hub which contains our latest thoughts and up-to-date analysis in relation to the GDPR and other data protection and cyber security related topics, as well as details of the assistance we can provide in this area. You can access the hub by clicking here.
Nick Pantlin, partner and head of our TMT, Data & Sourcing practice, said:
"We are living in the data economy and the technology age, which some have described as the 4th industrial revolution. Data has become that vital commodity of the new digital economy, an increasingly strategic asset for all corporates across all sectors. It's no longer geeky but career critical. With the help of technology (from AI, big data analytics, to the cloud and machine learning) corporates can now use data to get closer to clients and customers, determine strategy and make better investment decisions. The regulators are now playing catch up. The GDPR has shown why, together with cyber security, data protection is no longer a back office function but a "whole of business" boardroom issue."
Employment partner Christine Young, added:
"Virtually every organisation gathers and uses data day to day from individual customers, employees, workers and third parties. Appropriately using and protecting that data is an important business issue. The GDPR brings data privacy issues for organisations sharply into focus. It will mean changes to policies and procedures as a minimum and for some organisations more of a cultural shift (being proportionate in how data is processed and transparent about how it is used). As a whole of business issue we have specialists in employee data, data subject rights, data controller and data processor relationships and contracts, data breaches and cybersecurity who can help, and are already helping, organisations put themselves in the best position to comply with the GDPR in the UK and across Europe when it comes into force in May 2018."
Andrew Moir, partner and head of the global Cyber Security practice, said:
"Cyber security and the GDPR are inextricably linked. No GDPR compliance exercise is complete without consideration of cyber security, not just from an organisation's own internal perspective, but also in the context of third parties in its data supply chain."
If you would like to subscribe to further updates from our practical GDPR series please click here.
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