One third of European organisations still aren’t aware of major EU data protection regulations proposed by the European Commission, with a worrying knowledge gap between the most and the least clued-up nations, according to Trend Micro. The business commissioned Venson Bourne to interview over 800 senior IT decision makers across the region and found 36 per cent unaware of the coming EU General Data protection Regulation, despite its potential to introduce major changes which will supersede local laws. These include proposals which would force firms to give citizens the “right to be forgotten” – erasing all online records of their personal data – as well as potentially punitive fines for non-compliance.
There was a significant disparity between those countries where respondents were most aware of the regulations – including Germany 87 per cent, Poland 73 per cent, Italy 72 per cent, and the UK at 50 per cent. Likewise a quarter of European firms interviewed said they didn’t even know broadly what the proposals would require in their current form.
Once again Germany was the most clued up nation (93 per cent), followed by Italy at 83 per cent and Poland at 81 per cent, with the Nordics at 60 per cent and Benelux trailing last with 63 per cent. Also worrying is the fact that almost half – 45 per cent – said they didn’t know that the new regulations would replace local laws. In Germany 79 per cent said they knew this – the most for any EU country – followed by Italy at 70 per cent and the UK at 44 per cent. Further, the percentage of organisations unsure as to whether the coming regulations would apply to their own business or not varied greatly across Europe. In the UK that figure was 20 per cent.
Across Europe, most organisations said that they thought it the role of their national government (32 per cent), the European Commission, 19 per cent, data protection officers 15 per cent, and industry bodies 14 per cent, to raise awareness over the coming regulations , according to Trend Micro . “Europe is doing the right thing. Regional governments need to create advisory groups to help business understand what is required of them, what technology and process changes there will need to be,” said James Walker, security expert at the company.
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