Michael Melhem is a manager with Schellman. At Schellman, Michael leads and supports a variety of IT attestation, audit and compliance examinations for organizations across many industries. Prior to joining Schellman, Michael worked as a Senior Consultant for Deloitte’s Technology Risk practice. At Deloitte, he focused primarily on executing and managing Service Organization Control (SOC) examinations, IT security & privacy assessments, Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) consulting, and led a variety of cybersecurity assessments. Michael maintains multiple certifications, including CISSP, CISM, CISA, ISO 27001 Lead Auditor, and CCSK.
By:
MICHAEL MELHEM
May 28th, 2019
Giant strides have been made in privacy rights and regulations in Europe and many parts of the globe ever since the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) became enforceable on May 25th, 2018. In a world with serious impediments to my privacy and yours, the GDPR, to varying degrees of success, has been slowly leveling the field in how personal data is treated; rest assured, it’s a lot more than the privacy e-mail updates you’ve been receiving and the website cookie banners you’ve been accepting. In layman’s terms, the GDPR mandates requirements for storing, processing, accessing, and protecting personal data. We’ve all heard it – failure to comply with the Regulation attracts staggering fines of up to 4% annual global turnover of the prior financial year, or €20 million, whichever is higher. Despite the laundry list of concerns surrounding the Regulation, there has been reasonable progress since the enforcement date. Here are some notable observations since the inception of GDPR that you should know: