Nine months in, and the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is gathering steam, with fines accruing. Google’s $57 million fine on data protection violations, levied in January, stands as one recent example of what can happen when companies run afoul of its mandates.
The handling of data is entering uncharted waters, where the ways companies go about processing, storage and transparency are changing.
Amid it all, commerce is going ever digital, online, mobile and always on. The challenge for firms transacting with companies in a manner that is anything but face-to-face is that it’s hard to tell whether a consumer (and, thus, a transaction) is legitimate, or whether the data being presented has come from the Dark Web and that the bad guys are about to make off with some ill-gotten gains.