Customers getting ready as GDPR countdown hits 100 days

The 100 day countdown to GDPR has arrived and for those that like to use diary dates as a way of encouraging customers to focus on becoming compliant then this is a pretty powerful one.

The next milestone will be on the 25 February, which will mark the three months to go moment, and beyond that there will probably be 50, 30 and 10 as the introduction of the data regulations come into force.

The channel has been helping customers prepare for most of last year and research out this week illustrates that the bulk of customers are feeling confident about being on the right side of the compliance regulations.

There continue to be varying opinions over the readiness of customers but some of the latest offerings are fairly positive. EfficientIP has been out asking customers and found that 72% of UK firms are confident they will have got ready for GDPR.

As well as keeping on the right side of the law companies are also recognising the benefits of being in a position of gaining trust from customers handling sensitive data, which should also lead to greater loyalty.

“As organisations enter the final straight of GDPR compliance with 100 days to go, our research shows they have never been so close to regulatory compliance," said Herve Dhelin, svp strategy at EfficientIP.

"There is still some work to do, but it is encouraging to see nearly three- quarters of businesses are ready and most organisations see monitoring and analysis of DNS traffic, not firewalls nor endpoints, is the best way of preventing data breaches," he added.

But there are other voices sharing more concerning details of how far customers have got in terms of being ready for GDPR.

Forrester found that only 26% of EU firms had full GDPR compliance and issued a report that found that a third of US firms were ready, which was ahead of Europe.

Bert Bouwmeester, director business solutions at SQS, said that data protection assessments were a good way for the channel to get a gauge on customer processes.

"These assessments can help businesses focus their efforts and achieve compliance in a targeted fashion. However, the GDPR will not be the 'silver bullet' for cyber security. The fact that a business can be fully GDPR compliant, yet still liable to a data breach is something that all businesses need to be aware of," he said.

What is clear is that the channel will continue to play a role helping customers get ready for GDPR right up until 25 May and beyond.