GDPR Compliance: Definitions, Requirements, and Compliance Checklist

What Is GDPR Compliance? 

GDPR compliance refers to adhering to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which sets rules for how personal data of individuals within the EU is handled. It involves implementing measures to protect data privacy, ensuring transparency, and respecting individual rights related to their data. Non-compliance can result in significant fines.

Key aspects of GDPR compliance include:

• Lawfulness, fairness, and transparency: Organizations must process data in a way that is lawful, fair, and transparent to individuals. 
• Purpose limitation: Data should only be collected for specified, explicit, and legitimate purposes, and not further processed in a way that is incompatible with those purposes. 
• Data minimization: Organizations should only collect the minimum amount of personal data necessary for the intended purpose. 
• Data accuracy: Personal data must be accurate and kept up to date. 
• Storage limitation: Data should not be kept longer than necessary for the purpose it was collected. 
• Integrity and confidentiality: Data must be protected against unauthorized or unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction, or damage. 
• Accountability: Organizations must be able to demonstrate their compliance with the GDPR. 
• Individual rights: Individuals have rights regarding their personal data, including the right to access, rectify, erase, restrict processing, and data portability.
• Consent: In many cases, explicit consent is required before processing personal data, and this consent must be freely given, specific, informed, and unambiguous.

Any organization that handles the personal data of individuals within the EU, regardless of where the organization is located, is subject to the GDPR. This includes both controllers (those who determine the purposes and means of processing) and processors (those who process data on behalf of controllers).

Fines for non-compliance with the GDPR can be substantial, reaching up to 4% of an organization’s annual global revenue or €20 million, whichever is greater.

What Is the Purpose of GDPR? 

The primary purpose of the GDPR is to protect the personal data of EU residents. In today’s digital age, personal data has become a valuable commodity. It is collected, stored, processed, and sold by organizations for a variety of purposes, ranging from marketing to research. However, this data collection has also led to numerous privacy breaches, with personal data often falling into the wrong hands.

The GDPR places the control of personal data back into the hands of individuals, giving them the right to decide who can collect their data, how it can be used, and when it should be deleted. It also requires organizations to be transparent about their data practices and to take appropriate measures to protect personal data from unauthorized access or loss.

The GDPR also aims to harmonize data protection laws across the EU, creating a single set of rules that apply to all EU member states. This makes it easier for organizations to understand and comply with the law, reducing the legal complexities of operating in multiple EU countries.

Does the GDPR Apply to Your Organization?

To determine whether an organization must comply with the GDPR, you need to assess two key aspects: material scope and territorial scope. These define the types of activities and geographical contexts that fall under the regulation.

Material Scope

The GDPR applies to any processing of personal data, whether fully or partially automated. It also covers manual processing if the data is organized as part of a structured filing system. Common activities such as collecting, storing, accessing, analyzing, disclosing, or deleting personal information typically fall within this scope. If your organization handles personal data in nearly any form, it is likely subject to GDPR requirements.

Territorial Scope

The regulation applies to organizations based in the EU, regardless of where the data processing takes place. However, it also has extraterritorial reach. If your organization is located outside the EU but offers goods or services to individuals in the EU—or monitors their behavior within the EU—it is also covered by the GDPR. This applies even if the services are offered free of charge.

For example, a U.S.-based business selling products to EU customers or tracking the behavior of EU users through cookies or analytics tools is likely subject to the GDPR. This includes non-commercial organizations, such as a foreign government website collecting personal data from EU visitors.

Understanding GDPR Terminology

To effectively navigate GDPR compliance, it’s important to understand key terms defined in the regulation:

• Personal Data: Any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person. This includes direct identifiers (like name or ID number) and indirect identifiers (like IP addresses or location data).
• Data Subject: The individual whose personal data is being collected, held, or processed. Under GDPR, data subjects have specific rights, including access, rectification, and erasure.
• Data Controller: The organization or person that determines the purposes and means of processing personal data. Controllers are responsible for ensuring that data processing complies with GDPR.
• Data Processor: A party that processes personal data on behalf of the controller. Processors must follow the instructions of the controller and implement appropriate security measures.
• Processing: Any operation performed on personal data, whether automated or not. This includes collecting, recording, storing, altering, retrieving, using, disclosing, or deleting data.
• Consent: Freely given, specific, informed, and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes. Consent must be actively given—pre-ticked boxes or inactivity do not qualify.
• Data Protection Officer (DPO): A role required for certain organizations, responsible for overseeing data protection strategies and ensuring compliance with GDPR requirements.

Understanding these terms is essential for interpreting obligations and implementing GDPR controls correctly.

What Data Does GDPR Protect? 

The GDPR protects a wide range of personal data. This includes any information that can be used to identify an individual, either directly or indirectly. Examples of personal data include names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and identification numbers.

But the GDPR goes beyond just basic personal data. It also protects sensitive personal data, which includes information about an individual’s racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, genetic data, biometric data, health information, and information about a person’s sexual orientation.

The GDPR also protects online identifiers, such as IP addresses, cookies, and mobile device identifiers. It even protects pseudonymized data, which is data that has been transformed in such a way that it can no longer be attributed to a specific individual without the use of additional information.

Key Requirements of GDPR 

Here is a brief summary of the GDPR requirements:

• Lawful, fair and transparent processing: Organizations must have a lawful basis for processing personal data, and they must be clear and upfront about how they will use personal data.
• Purpose limitation: Personal data should only be collected for specified, explicit, and legitimate purposes, and should not be further processed in a way that is incompatible with those purposes.
• Data minimization: Personal data must be adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary in relation to the purposes for which they are processed. This could involve anonymizing or pseudonymizing data to reduce the risk of harm to individuals.
• Accuracy: Personal data must be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date. Any inaccurate data should be rectified or deleted without delay.
• Storage limitation: Personal data should not be kept for longer than is necessary for the purposes for which they are processed. Organizations should have clear policies in place for data retention and deletion.
• Integrity and confidentiality: This principle states that personal data should be processed in a way that ensures appropriate security, including protection against unauthorized or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction or damage.
• Accountability: Organizations must not only comply with the GDPR, but also be able to demonstrate their compliance. This could involve maintaining detailed records of data processing activities, carrying out regular audits, and appointing a data protection officer.
• Right to be fForgotten: EU citizens have the right to have their data erased within a reasonable period by the data controller if one of the following grounds applies:
  • Where PII is no longer necessary in relation to the purpose for which it was collected or processed
  • Where the PII owner withdraws consent or objects to the processing, and there is no lawful basis to continue processing the data
  • If the data is being used for direct marketing only, or a child is involved
  • Where the owner objects to the processing and there is no overriding lawful/legitimate grounds for continuation, or PII data must be erased in order to comply with a legal obligation

GDPR Fines and Penalties for Noncompliance

Noncompliance with the GDPR can result in hefty fines and penalties. The maximum fine for a serious violation is up to €20 million or 4% of the company’s global annual turnover, whichever is higher. Lesser violations can result in a fine of up to 10 million Euros or 2% of the company’s global annual turnover. 

Since the enactment of GDPR in 2018, the EU has begun enforcing the law more strictly, and in recent years fines of hundreds of millions of dollars were imposed on several companies. However, fines are not the only risk. Noncompliance can also result in damage to a company’s reputation, loss of customer trust, and potential legal action from individuals whose data has been misused.

The Intersection between GDPR and AI 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has taken the world by storm, revolutionizing various sectors including healthcare, finance, and marketing to name a few. However, with the rise of AI comes an increased risk to personal data security. The GDPR is playing an important role in guiding the ethical use of AI.

AI systems often require large amounts of data to function effectively. This data often includes personal information, which is protected under GDPR. Therefore, organizations using AI must ensure they are compliant with GDPR. Failure to do so can result in legal penalties. The intersection between GDPR and AI is thus a critical area for businesses to understand and navigate.

While GDPR offers protection for personal data, it also encourages innovation in AI, by including provisions for AI development. By setting guidelines for data usage, GDPR helps businesses develop AI systems that respect privacy and uphold ethical standards.

A Brief Checklist to Ensure GDPR Compliance

Here are a few measures you can take to improve your organization’s GDPR compliance:

• Implement privacy by design: This concept requires organizations to consider privacy at the initial design stages of any project involving personal data. It also demands the inclusion of privacy features throughout the entire lifecycle of the project. This means considering data protection implications from the onset of any project, and ensuring that privacy safeguards are built into your systems and processes.
• Map all data: Identify all sources of personal data within the organization, including internal systems, third-party applications, and physical records. Document what data is collected, the legal basis for processing, who has access to it, where it is stored, and how it flows between systems or departments. This visibility is essential for managing compliance, responding to data subject requests, and performing risk assessments.
• Develop and document data privacy policies: This includes determining how personal data is collected, processed, stored, and shared within the organization. These policies should detail your organization’s approach to data protection and provide guidelines for employees to follow.
• Conduct Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs):  For any processing activity likely to result in high risk to individual rights—such as profiling, large-scale processing of sensitive data, or systematic monitoring—conduct a DPIA. This assessment should evaluate the necessity and proportionality of the processing, identify potential risks to personal data, and outline measures to mitigate those risks. DPIAs must be completed before the processing begins and reviewed regularly.
• Establish  processes for data access, rectification, erasure, and portability: It is important to handle data-related requests within the specified timeframes. Under GDPR, individuals have the right to access their personal data, correct inaccuracies, erase their data, and transfer their data to another entity. Organizations must set up systems to locate and retrieve personal data, and processes to correct, erase, or transfer data.
• Implement robust security measures: The GDPR requires businesses to take appropriate technical and organizational measures to ensure the security of personal data. This includes implementing encryption to protect data, establishing access controls to restrict who can access personal data, and conducting regular security assessments to identify and address potential vulnerabilities.
• Appoint a DPO where required: Depending on the size and nature of your business, you may be required to appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO). This is a person who is responsible for overseeing data protection strategy and implementation within the organization.
• Develop a data breach response plan: This plan should outline the steps to take in the event of a data breach, including identifying the breach, containing it, assessing the impact, notifying the relevant parties, and taking measures to prevent future breaches. Under the GDPR, businesses may be required to report data breaches to the relevant supervisory authority within 72 hours of becoming aware of the breach.
• Establish and enforce data retention policies: This involves determining how long personal data should be retained and what should happen to it after the retention period expires. Under GDPR, personal data should only be kept for as long as necessary for the purposes for which it was collected. After the retention period expires, the data should be deleted or anonymized.

Exabeam: Enhancing Threat Detection with Advanced Security Analytics

New-Scale SIEM is a next-generation AI-driven security operations platform that unifies threat detection, investigation, and response (TDIR) into one intuitive solution security teams actually want to use. By combining behavioral analytics, automation, and open integrations, it closes the SIEM effectiveness gap and delivers limitless scale to ingest, parse, store, search, and report on petabytes of data from anywhere. Pre-built with hundreds of integrations and the ability to onboard new log sources in minutes, it helps analysts work smarter by reducing alert fatigue by up to 60% and cutting investigation times by as much as 80%. With more than 100 pre-built correlation rules, integrated threat intelligence, and AI-assisted timelines that surface critical incidents faster, security teams can detect and respond to 90% of insider threats before other vendors can catch them while lowering total cost of ownership by up to 35%.

The platform includes Exabeam Nova, a collection of six specialized AI agents embedded across the Exabeam New-Scale SIEM and Security Log Management products. These agents work alongside security analysts to automate complex tasks, accelerate investigations, and improve detection accuracy. From natural language search and automated visualizations to correlation rule building, incident triage, and executive-ready security posture reporting, Nova brings speed, precision, and consistency to every stage of threat detection, investigation, and response.

For more information on the cutting edge changes in the SIEM space, we recommend watching this webcast called Agentic AI – Reimagine Threat Detection, Investigation, and Response.