ABSTRACT
Businesses large and small have wrestled with challenges of how to manage and safeguard volumes of information that grow exponentially every year. Requests for budget to better manage how digital information is collected, analyzed and used have for a long time fallen upon deaf ears at the senior management and Board levels. GDPR is changing that. The General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) presents opportunities for cost savings through efficiencies required to meet its mandates, and increased business by adherence to contractual requirements that the organization meet its customers’ requirements for GDPR compliance. Taking advantage of these opportunities will require coordination between machine business development personnel and the technical team that utilizes machine learning solutions. In order to accommodate individuals’ requests for data access, amendment and revision, and secure data wherever it lives, as required by GDPR’s privacy risk assessment mandate, organizations must map and inventory their data and prepare processes to manage it in efficient and cost-effective ways. The task is too daunting to be done manually, but technical tools that utilize artificial intelligence and other forms of machine learning can be brought to bear, with the resultant savings in time and cost, and opening opportunities for new business that requires GDPR compliance. The times, as a poet once said, are changing and businesses can grab the opportunity or sink under the weight of disappointed customer expectations.
