Less than One-Third of Companies Unprepared to Meet EU GDPR

Less than a third of organizations believe they are compliant or on the way to compliance; 30% state that they will need to make substantial changes to be compliant.

July 19, 2017

2 Min Read

PRESS RELEASE

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--With the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR) set to go into effect in less than a year, Crowd Research Partners today released the results of a study focused on identifying the perspective of organizations on the impact of the new regulation and how they plan to be compliant. The study, sponsored by STEALTHbits Technologies, is based on input from 530 global cybersecurity professionals who are members of the 370,000 member Information Security Community on LinkedIn.

“This survey reveals that while over 90% of the respondents indicated familiarity with the EU GDPR, less than a third believe they are compliant or well on their way to compliance,” said Holger Schulze, CEO of Crowd Research Partners, and founder of the 370,000 member Information Security Community on LinkedIn. “What is striking in this study is the marked contrast in level of preparedness and awareness between companies headquartered in the US and the European Union.

The key findings of the study include:

  • While an overwhelming majority of surveyed organizations (approaching 90%) are familiar with the EU GDPR, only about a third (32%) state that they are compliant or well on the way to compliance.

  • Approximately 30% of surveyed companies report that they will need to make substantial changes to security practices and technology to be in compliance with EU GDPR policies.

  • The primary challenges in becoming compliant with EU GDPR policies are lack of budget (32%), limited understanding of the regulation (29%), and lack of expert staff with critical skills (28%).

  • The most important initiative in meeting EU GDPR compliance is to make an inventory of user data and map it to protected EU GDPR categories (49%), with the next most significant initiative to design applications and databases to have privacy enabled by default (31%).

  • A substantial majority (65%) of organizations where EU GDPR compliance is a top priority already have or plan to have a Data Protection Officer (either in-house or outsourced).

“Protecting an organization’s data is the core of what we do at STEALTHbits,” said Adam Laub, SVP of Product Marketing. “With this upcoming regulation, many organizations have indicated that provisions for privacy by design and default are of most significant concern. We would encourage organizations to review this report carefully to understand the perspectives of their peers and gain insight into some of the challenges involved in GDPR conformance.”

The full study report can be downloaded at http://crowdresearchpartners.com/portfolio_item/eu-gdpr-report/

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