Legal Insights

General Data Protection Regulation

Brendan Coady

• 27 February 2020 • 1 min read

In 2018, the Australian and global privacy and data landscape is shifting significantly with the introduction of the mandatory data breach notification under the Australian Privacy Act 1988 and the new European Union privacy regime, the General Data Protection Regulation.

The GDPR will apply to organisations if they process the personal data of people in the EU and do any of the following:

offer goods or services to people in the EU – for example, on a website or in marketing material that is in a European currency or language;
monitor the behaviour of people in the EU – for example, by using cookies or other data processing techniques which track individuals online; or
have an office in the EU.

"This means that many Australian organisations will be affected by the GDPR. Fines for non-compliance are eye-watering – up to €20 million or 4 per cent of annual global turnover (whichever is higher)."

Brendan Coady, Maddocks

Infographic explaining GDPR

This is an optimal time for organisations to:

consider whether they fall within the ambit of the GDPR;
map their data flows and understand the privacy implications; and
review and, if necessary, amend their practices, policies and contracts to ensure that they are GDPR-compliant.

Maddocks offers a ‘privacy by design’ approach to proactively ensure whole organisations are privacy compliant. We believe that organisations who are robustly prepared can adjust to the new privacy and data landscape with confidence.

For more on the new privacy laws and practical ways to prepare for them, you can access our GDPR survival guide, co-authored with data security experts Commvault.