FinTech50
PREPARING FOR A NEW DATA SECURITY ENGINE
Nigel Miller, Head of Technology, Fox Williams
T
he EU’s proposed new General Data Protection
Regulation – expected to be adopted in 2014 and
to come into force two years later - will impact all
sectors but especially FinTech, where data security and
privacy are key issues.
Data protection laws have remained largely unchanged
since the EU Data Protection Directive in 1995. Not only
does the current law pre-date relatively recent developments
such as social media, mobile apps, cloud computing and big
data, it does not even contemplate mainstream Internet
technologies. The proposed new Regulation – described
as one of the most lobbied pieces of European legislation
in history – seeks to update data protection laws and to
harmonise them within the EU. It will apply not only to
organizations that are established in the EU, but also to those
outside the EU that target EU citizens either by offering them
goods and services, or by monitoring their behaviour.
Under the proposed new Regulation, data controllers
must implement appropriate technical and organizational
meas