Ten years of European Data Protection Day
The convention was launched in 1981: The end of January, more precisely on 28 Jan 2017, marked the anniversary of European Data Protection Day. Already in the 1980s, the international traffic of personal data increased strongly. What about a uniform level of data protection today?
The keywords of the data protection convention in 2017 are also: good faith, purpose limitation principle, necessity principle - or simply: the data subject's right to information. The introduction of the European Data Protection Day shows how important it is to deal with personal data.
"More than 30 years ago, no one could have imagined the extent to which personal data would be collected and processed today. From today's perspective, it seems all the more visionary that the countries already recognized back then what the core problems were," comments Gabriel Gabriel, Managing Director of Brainloop Switzerland. In Switzerland, however, the agreement has not been in force since January 26, 1981, but only since 1998.
Current Handycap: Clouds
Especially with the triumph of the cloud, new challenges arise for the protection of personal data. With various protection goals, the legislator is attempting to transform the requirements of the fundamental right to informational self-determination into concrete instructions for the various actors.
In the area of IT security, the protection goals of availability, integrity and confidentiality have long been generally accepted. However, the protection goals of non-linkability and data economy also play a central role in this area. The aim is to prevent interlinked data from undermining the right to informal self-determination. At the same time, no more information should be collected than is absolutely necessary.
Preferred locations
Another much-discussed point is the question of the location of data storage - i.e. the question of whether the servers are located in Germany, for example, or in a secure third country. After the experiences with the Safe Harbour agreement and its successor, the Privacy Shield, it has proven to be worthwhile to rely on local or at least European data centers - which preferably operate in Switzerland or Germany.
For example, more and more customers are using data protection solutions for a variety of deployment scenarios, such as within the board of directors or executive management, in project collaboration or due diligence, or in areas such as know-how protection in research and development.
