According to a study commissioned by TRUSTe, awareness was the highest amongst financial services companies (58%) and lowest amongst tech companies that are some of the greatest users of data (43%). Companies with mature privacy programs (10-25 privacy employees) had the highest awareness. There was surprisingly no significant difference in awareness between the US and businesses based in the UK, France and Germany.
While the top concerns were the new penalties (42%) and tighter consent requirements (37%), the good news is that around four out of five companies (82%) felt the changes would have a positive impact on consumer data protection.
Even though this survey was conducted before the European Court of Justice ruling on the validity of the Safe Harbor agreement, there is still a high belief that the new legislation will have teeth with 77% thinking that it will be actively enforced by EU regulators. 82% think it will be a higher enforcement priority than the EU Cookie Directive and 76% agree they will spend more on GDPR compliance than for the EU Cookie Directive.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is expected to become law by the end of 2015 and will mandate that all companies with EU customers follow the new rules wherever they are based.
The study was based on a sample of sample of 202 professionals with knowledge of data privacy from companies with more than 250 employees in US, UK, France and Germany.
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