Tech Giants Brace for Europe’s New Data Privacy Rules
“If anything, they seem very eager to understand how exactly they can comply with the regulation.”
In the past, many of the companies fought back in European courts over privacy rules
and declined to offer certain products in the region rather than redesign them to meet privacy standards.
The coming of the new rules has nonetheless pushed a huge scale of internal change, Gilad Golan, Google’s director for security
and data protection, said at a San Francisco event last month to introduce new security features.
The internet retailer said it would strengthen the encryption around the data it stores on its cloud storage services,
and reaffirmed the rights of customers to choose which region — Europe or otherwise — where they want their data stored.
While these changes are rippling out worldwide, a major reason for these shifts comes from Europe: The tech giants are
preparing for a stringent new set of data privacy rules in the region, called the General Data Protection Regulation.
Google, he said, has had to go through each of its services — from Gmail to its Cloud storage services — to comply.
Since the new rules require individuals to give their consent before a company accesses data, for example, Google has had
to redesign many consent agreements, as well as change underlying technology to make it easier to remove someone’s data.