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Staying GDPR Compliant With Edge Computing

Mohammed NaserMohammed Naser

Maintaining GDPR compliance can be a complex process for a lot of businesses. Edge computing is here to make it easier for you through distributed security.

Offering a robust yet compliant solution is no easy feat for a single cloud provider. The managing of multiple data centers is cumbersome. It only gets complicated as they are widespread geographically with varying compliance regulations. In May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rolled out. GDPR's comprehensive legislation is addressing the issues of online privacy and personal data protection. Therefore, completely changing the data management workflow of organizations.

Through GDPR, the customers have more control over their personal information. Any company when collecting data requires the consent of consumers. But how that is collected, stored and used by third-party organizations is in the hands of the customer. So to maintain confidentiality and compliance, businesses are looking to adopt edge computing.

Businesses Staying Compliant with Edge Computing

Edge computing has distributed architecture, allowing users to have access to their data at a point nearest to them. Therefore, security along the network perimeter is decentralized. Decentralized security is what makes your enterprise mindful of the privacy of end-users and thus, compliant.

Due to an edge network, all widespread data centers under different regulations maintain compliance as per the specific region.

Moreover, edge computing enables individual industries and businesses to move towards GDPR compliance. Some of the impacted industries are:

Healthcare Services

Massive amounts of data are collected virtually from patients. Any information provided by a patient is personally identifiable and hence falls under GDPR. By implementing edge computing, data is available at the closest source of collection. As the distance travelled by data shortens, the risk of interception becomes smaller.

Due to restricted movement of data, users can choose when, where and to which third-party application their data should be available. Access to such data is according to the preference of the patient. Therefore, edge devices maintain the privacy of user information.

Smart Home Devices

Smart home devices are known to transfer data back and forth from the cloud. But a significant amount of information fed to it by a user falls under GDPR. Information related to location, financial transactions and health have unique implications under compliance. Edge computing, integrated with smart home devices gives control in the hands of the consumers. Smart home devices allow customers can customize data access in their settings. So they can decide the purpose and usage of their information.

Public Utilities

GDPR commands over information collected from homes of public service users. Public utilities like electricity, telecommunications, water, record customer data. Any data related to consumption or usage is considered private information. Implementation of edge computing services protects public service providers from the risk of non-compliance.

Edge computing provides localized data streams. With the help of this data is monitored based on delimited geographical zones rather than individual consumption metrics.

Make Your Organization GDPR Compliant

GDPR is here to say, so industries might as well adapt their security playbooks and get with compliant. As IoT is also rapidly adopted among enterprises, keeping sensitive and private information safe is a growing concern. It is time to make compliance your priority with edge computing.

It is essential to start implementing privacy by design and keep all customer data available at the edge. This enables your business to gain and maintain the trust of your customers. Not only do you need to ensure the security of your customers' data but also support overall cloud security.

Get in touch with VEXXHOST experts to know more about edge computing and how OpenStack is paving the way forward.

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