EU data rules create big opportunities for enterprises

Recent announcements surrounding the introduction of EU General Data Protection Regulations have sent a shivers down the spines of enterprise who have been investing heavily into “big data”. Industry vendors have been responding to European enterprise customers who are leading the charge by demanding solutions that address the changing landscape presented by GDPR.

This trend was discussed in much detail at the Data Works Summit hosted by Hortonworks in Munich, Germany. Hortonworks who this week announced a new release of Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP 2.6) have been highlighting the benefits that combining open source software solutions to enable enterprises to comply with General Data Protection Regulations and implement wider data policies.

US based Hortonworks with international headquarters in the London, England has committed 95% of new investments towards international growth. When asked about the companies concerns about Brexit, Rajnish Verma – President and COO Hortonworks made a commitment to the London office stating that he has a fondness for the wonderful office building and the selection of Indian curry available. He was quick to flag that if Hortonworks main banking and telecoms customers relocated post Brexit that the company may have to re-consider how the company directs its expansion and will follow its customers.

Offering Real-time Protection

Enterprises have been leveraging open source technologies to comply with the ever evolving landscape of data legislation. By combining open source technologies such as Ranger and Atlas enterprises can use meta-data to attribute data to source, enabling them to create access policies on databases such as Hadoop.

Dynamic data policies that can then be created with user, location, prohibitions and data expiry in mind. Location and prohibition can be combined to restrict data access based on the end users location while also prohibiting the combination of data sets. This makes for a really powerful combination by dynamically protecting both consumers’ data and privacy.

Speaking with Nadeem Gulzar, Head of Advanced Analytics & Architecture – Danske Bank about the impact of GDPR.

What was the general sentiment in the banking sector towards GDPR?

The banking industry had mixed feelings about GDPR. Some people seen it as a black plague. After we talked with the EU regulator, we realised It is all about making sure the consumer can control and owns the data that we collect.

How did you adapt your strategy?

Originally we were scared, but actually after some reflection we realised it was OK. We thought it was going to cost us $1 billion. For the banking sector we were pretty well off as we are governed by strict legislation. We have a straight forward strategy everything needs to be hosted on premises on our own private cloud.

What impact did GDPR have for you?

Customer can come to us and ask for all the data about them and they can also ask to remove all the data about them.

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