GRC or Governance, Risk, Compliance has proven essential in ensuring a company or an organization’s success. Governance makes sure that the activities being carried out in an Organization are helping an organization to meet its business goals. Risk management enables a company to identify and manage potentially harmful forced or unforced errors in the system, whereas compliance, in simple words, ensures that the organization functions in a way such that it is at par with the related laws and regulations, which may be international standards or intra-organization regulations. GRC management has become a lot more simplified due to the development of tools like VComply that provide a one-stop solution for all things GRC.

GDPR or General Data Protection Regulation, which has been recently approved by the EU Parliament aims to address the hotly discussed issue of Data Privacy. It was designed to protect and empower all the EU citizens’ data privacy. It is important to understand that even though this issue has been addressed only in the EU, with the advent of the technological age and the influx of humongous amount of data (or “big data” as we call it) from various organizations, it is indeed a matter of international concern. The 3 V’s of big data- Volume, Variety and Velocity should be considered and privacy regulations should be implemented accordingly.

 Why is it so important to include GDPR in GRC?

This is because, in addition to the existing rules and regulations that need to be followed by an organization in order to be compliant, every business owner or stakeholder in the EU needs to ensure that the Gdpr laws are followed effectively as well. In fact, it could spell disaster for an organization, otherwise. The formal consequences of non-compliance include fines of the higher of either 20 Million Euro or 4 per cent of annual global revenues, which could be crushing even for big players such as Apple, Samsung, Facebook, etc. Another drawback that needs to be considered is brand damage. A well-publicized breach can easily put a permanent dent on your company’s image. Therefore, if you truly want to be compliance ready, and are based in the EU, cover all your bases from the get-go and include GDPR in your existing GRC management framework.

Why GDPR needs to be a world-wide regulatory act

The relevance of GDPR has been further highlighted by the recent infamous Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal. As per Wikipedia, the scandal involved the collection of personally identifiable information of up to 87 million Facebook users, which was allegedly used to attempt to influence voter opinion on behalf of the politicians who hired them. The scandal sparked an outrage amongst the public. Ethical standards for social media companies were questioned as well as the alleged manipulation carried out by political consulting organizations and politicians. This called for greater consumer protection in online media and the right to privacy as well as curbs on misinformation and propaganda. This goes to show that even corporate giants like Facebook cannot be trusted with data privacy. This, in turn, leads to confusion and a sense of helplessness amongst the people, especially in a country like India where people still shy away from using the internet’s facilities to its full potential. A lot of Indians mistrust the security of applications like internet banking or online shopping and such scandals only go on to further strengthen their sense of shortcomings when it comes to online security.

GRC management puts to rest an organization’s compliance woes, thus, enabling an organization to perform exemplarily and with GDPR implemented along with it, an organization’s success is invariable. Which is why it is an absolute need of the hour for the world to slowly but surely adapt the GDPR terms such that the people of the world feel safe and secure with regards to their data at all times as well as to fuel a country’s economy by making their organizations more effective.

Refer to our previous blog posts to know more about GDPR’s impact on business and how to be prepared for it.

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