June 9, 2015,  European Commission, European Parliament, Guru in a Bottle, Legal update  No comments

The clock is ticking for reaching agreement on the EU General Data Protection Regulation, according to the European People’s Party (EPP) Group that brings together centre and centre-right pro-European political forces from the Member States and represents the largest group in the European Parliament.

Monday 15 and Tuesday 16 June 2015

The Council of Ministers will meet in Luxembourg to agree the adoption of a general approach to GDPR.

In effect, the Council will declare its own view on the preferred draft for GDPR and GDPR watchers the world over will be able to compare and contrast the various differences that will exist between this version and the one favoured by the Eur...

June 9, 2015,  Banks, Council of Ministers, data protection, EU General Data Protection Regulation, European Commission, European Parliament  No comments

According to Varonis (Nasdaq:VRNS), a leading provider of software solutions for unstructured, human-generated enterprise data, banks will be among the first to be hit with massive fines for falling foul of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

In a poll conducted at Cebit – Europe’s largest IT show – the company revealed the level of how unprepared the financial services sector is to life under GDPR. Notably, 50% of all respondents that took part in the survey worked within the European banking sector.

According to Varonis, despite the small sample size of 145 respondents, its survey reflects a much wide degree of how under prepared the financial servic...

May 13, 2015,  EU General Data Protection Regulation, European Commission, European Parliament  No comments

In the last couple of weeks the blogosphere has gone into overdrive regarding the final text of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that’s on track to emerge before the end of the year. Agreement between the European Parliament, Council of Ministers and European Commission now looks like a distinct possibility in November 2015 after which there’ll be a two-year transition period before sanctions begin to bite.

As GDPR watchers will have already clocked, there’s been a leak on the first reading of EU Regulation by the Council of Ministers. The document runs into 630 pages and can be accessed here.

Fortunately, the fog that’s surrounded the details of the fi...

April 25, 2015,  EU General Data Protection Regulation, European Commission, European Parliament  No comments

In the media this week there’s been a fair amount of speculation as to when the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is likely to see the light of day. Some commentators are speculating that sign-off by the European Parliament, Council of Ministers and the European Commission won’t happen until Spring 2016.

Earlier this year, a joint statement by EC vice president Andrus Ansip and EU Commissioner Věra Jourová indicated that GDPR could become law by the end of 2015. Perhaps this was wishful thinking?

And this week, some 60 pressure groups including the UK’s Open Rights Group, Liberty, the Dutch Consumer Council and US Electronic Privacy Information Centre have wr...

April 10, 2015,  Legal update  No comments

While the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements have yet to be finalised, 20 years of European jurisprudence is a strong indication of the direction of travel where the supervisory authorities are going to clamp down hard on those organisations and their outsourcing providers that violate the new minimum standards for data protection.

And if you’re in any doubt how hard this will impact the telecoms sector, then you should look no further than what’s just happened to AT&T earlier this week in the US to get a taste of what we can expect to see here in the EU in the wake of the GDPR.

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reached a settlement wit...

March 29, 2015,  EU General Data Protection Regulation  No comments

As many data protection, compliance, human resources and legal experts speculate as to the consequences that will be wrecked on all organisations as a result of the forthcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), there is widespread confusion across the web as to whether Bring Your Own Devices (BYOD) is still acceptable or whether organisations need to radically undertake a data protection impact assessment (DPIA) and change their internal policies as a result.

“Even though the law in this area hasn’t changed today, it would be foolhardy in the extreme for organisations not to carry out a DPIA as a precautionary measure given the massive data protection and security...

March 27, 2015,  Events, The Art of Influencing and Selling  No comments

On the 26 March 2015, the Faculty of Business and Law at Kingston University London was host to a delegation of students from the University of Berlin that were on an exchange visit.

Part of the itinerary, organised by Dr Amelia Au-Yeung was to explore whether students are adequately prepared for life in the world of commerce and whether business schools are doing enough to equip them to be effective salespeople.

To help stimulate debate as to whether it’s ‘nature or nurture’, I was asked was asked to pull together a panel of experts to debate the issue with our visitors from Germany.

Fatima Annan-Diab, Associate professor at the Faculty of Business and Law referred t...

March 21, 2015,  Guru in a Bottle  No comments

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March 1, 2015,  EU General Data Protection Regulation, News  No comments

Guenther Oettinger, Europe’s digital economy chief and the German representative on the European Commission has delivered a stark warning to Google and Facebook that they must either comply with the principles of the forthcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or face being thrown out of the single market.

Oettinger accused the tech giants of using “an electronic vacuum cleaner” to collect and then target advertising using detailed information of users often without their knowledge or consent.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Oettinger said: “The Americans are in the lead, they’ve got the data, the business models and so the power.”

He predicted t...

February 28, 2015,  data protection, EU General Data Protection Regulation, Legal update, Marketing practice, News, Social marketing practice  No comments

We have two feature articles written by Ardi Kolah:

Data protection rules overhaul – Top Tips for compliance

Extract: Data protection and the security of data is perhaps the biggest issue facing the advertising and marketing sector from a business continuity perspective as to get this badly wrong opens the door to punitive fines of up to five per cent of global turnover or €100m. Ardi Kolah shares his top ten tips for marketers.

Urgent Action is Required as Data Breaches hit Record Highs

Extract: According to global digital security firm Gemalto, 1,541 data breaches in 2014 led to one billion data records being compromised, representing a four per cent increase in data...