A sweeping data privacy law known as the General Data Protection Rule (GDPR) goes into effect across the EU today.

While businesses have had two years to prepare for the new rules, a recent survey from data analytics firm SAS found only 49 percent of companies worldwide said they will meet the deadline to comply.

“I think a lot of companies are kind of sitting on their hands and seeing, well, how does this play out?” said David Smith, head of GDPR technologies at SAS UK & Ireland.

Now, with GDPR officially in effect, companies and individuals in the data management space are taking advantage of big business opportunities.

“It’s good news for people like me,” said Tamzin Evershed, global data privacy lead at Veritas Technologies, a U.S.-headquartered data management firm. “We need more and more people who really understand how data protection and privacy really works.”

Evershed has spent the past two years preparing for GDPR, working with Veritas’ IT and legal teams around the world. “It’s actually quite complicated and many people are having to come up to speed really quickly,” she said.

Source: cnbc
How Europe’s new privacy law called GDPR is creating big business opportunities