Compliance with GDPR Privacy Rules Is Now Mandatory for All Firms Doing Business with Citizens of the European Union. A Software Product from Condusiv Technologies Helps Ensure Compliance with a Key GDPR Provision

On May 25th of this year, the European Union formally adopted an updated and consolidated set of rules for personal data privacy called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The regulation applies not only to European companies, but to any firm doing business, in person or online, with a citizen of any of the 28 nations that make up the EU. Condusiv Technologies CEO James D’Arezzo says, “Penalties for noncompliance with GDPR are severe: as much as 4% of an offending company’s global turnover, up to a total fine of €20 million.” D’Arezzo, whose company is a world leader in I/O reduction and SQL database performance, adds, “A key provision of GDPR is the right to be forgotten (RTBF), which empowers any European citizen to have his or her name and identifying data permanently removed from the archives of any firm holding that data in its possession.”

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A component of the right to be forgotten is called “right to erasure,” which requires that the data be permanently deleted, i.e. irrecoverable. Many affected records consist not of fields or records in a database, but of discrete files in formats such as Excel or Word. What is needed in such a case, D’Arezzo notes, is a tool that can recover from incorrect deletions and also, in the case of confirmed valid “right to erasure” requests, permanently delete the record so that it cannot be retrieved. For Windows-based systems, this dual ability is offered by Condusiv’s industry leading Undelete product line, which ensures that—up to a point—every deleted file or version of an Office file on a Windows PC or server can easily be restored, even if it was deleted before Undelete was installed.

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In the case of a data security issue such as a confirmed “right to erasure” request, however, Undelete’s SecureDelete feature will overwrite the file to help ensure it is unrecoverable, using specific bit patterns specified for this purpose by the US National Security Agency. A second feature, “Wipe Free Space”, will overwrite any free space on a selected volume, using the same specific bit patterns as SecureDelete to clear out any previously written data in that free space.

“With these two features,” says D’Arezzo, “when you select the option to delete a file with SecureDelete, you know it is virtually impossible to read/recover any of the data from that volume. Although you may have bought Undelete for its file recovery abilities, it provides you with other features to keep your data environment safe, secure, and compliant with current privacy requirements.”

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