Companies benefit from data protection

The EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been in effect since May 2018, and according to the latest Cisco Data Privacy Benchmark Study, 59 percent of the companies surveyed believe they are in compliance with all or most of the requirements. 29 percent expect this compliance within one year and nine percent in more than one year.

"In the past year, the importance of privacy and data protection has increased significantly. Data is the new currency. As the market changes, companies are deriving real business benefits from their data protection investments"

Michelle Dennedy, chief privacy officer at Cisco, commented.

Customers increasingly expect the products and services they use to provide adequate data protection. Companies that have invested accordingly and comply with the GDPR benefit from shorter delays in selling solutions to existing customers due to data protection concerns: 3.4 weeks compared to 5.4 weeks for the least GDPR-compliant companies.

GDPR-compliant companies report fewer data breaches, fewer documents affected in security incidents, and shorter system downtimes. They were also significantly less likely to experience a significant financial loss due to a data breach.

In addition, 75 percent of respondents said they derive many overall benefits from their data protection investments. These include increased agility and innovation through appropriate data controls, competitive advantage and increased operational efficiency. These result from organizing and cataloging data.

Only 37 percent of the most GDPR-compliant companies also recorded a data breach that cost more than $500,000, compared to 64 percent of the least GDPR-compliant companies.