Tech Giants Brace for Europe’s New Data Privacy Rules<br />“If anything, they seem very eager to understand how exactly they can comply with the regulation.”<br />In the past, many of the companies fought back in European courts over privacy rules<br />and declined to offer certain products in the region rather than redesign them to meet privacy standards.<br />The coming of the new rules has nonetheless pushed a huge scale of internal change, Gilad Golan, Google’s director for security<br />and data protection, said at a San Francisco event last month to introduce new security features.<br />The internet retailer said it would strengthen the encryption around the data it stores on its cloud storage services,<br />and reaffirmed the rights of customers to choose which region — Europe or otherwise — where they want their data stored.<br />While these changes are rippling out worldwide, a major reason for these shifts comes from Europe: The tech giants are<br />preparing for a stringent new set of data privacy rules in the region, called the General Data Protection Regulation.<br />Google, he said, has had to go through each of its services — from Gmail to its Cloud storage services — to comply.<br />Since the new rules require individuals to give their consent before a company accesses data, for example, Google has had<br />to redesign many consent agreements, as well as change underlying technology to make it easier to remove someone’s data.
