27 April 2016 marked a turning point for a lot of countries as well as a lot businesses worldwide: EU regulation 2016/679 (going by it’s more widely known name General Data Protection Regulation and abbreviated GDPR) was adopted by the European Parliament, the Council as well as the Commission [1]. Especially readers from countries outside of the EU might ask “Why should this be of interest for me?”.
The point is: if your business is dealing with data of EU citizens (e.g. because
you are having an online shop selling goods in the EU, or you operate a social
network platform with customers that are EU citizens) you are liable under GDPR
– this is regulated in Article 3, section 2 of the regulation: “This Regulation
applies to the processing of personal data of data subjects residing in the
Union by a controller not established in the Union, where the processing
activities are related to:
(a) the offering of goods or services to such data subjects in the Union; or
(b) the monitoring of their behaviour.”
I’d guess that if you are reading these lines you become aware (if not have been
so before) that your business might most probably be affected by GDPR as well.
Now, the purpose of this blog post is not to enlighten you on the basics of GDPR
but to discuss one special, interesting aspect of this regulation:
pseudonymisation and how it might support your way to become compliant with
GDPR.