Acronis Helps Businesses Achieve GDPR Compliance

As the enforcement date arrives for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Europe's strict new set of consumer privacy protection rules, Acronis is helping its customers avoid GDPR's massive fines for non-compliance with secure, private storage and backup of personal data in EU-approved locations with built-in defenses against malware attacks. Acronis data protection products and services, including Acronis Backup, Acronis Backup Advanced, Acronis Backup Cloud, Acronis Storage, and Acronis Disaster Recovery Service deliver several key building-block technologies that businesses need to improve their GDPR compliance posture to avoid potential fines of €10M to €20M.

Schaffhausen, Switzerland, 25 May 2018. Acronis, a global leader in hybrid cloud data protection and storage currently celebrating its 15-year anniversary, marked today's arrival of the enforcement date of the EU GDPR privacy protection standard by highlighting the many ways it helps businesses to achieve GDPR compliance. Now that the failure to protect the personal data of EU residents can expose a business to regulatory fines of 10M-20M Euros (or two to four percent of its annual revenue), many companies are reinforcing their data protection infrastructure as a key means to achieving GDPR compliance.

As of May 25, 2018, EU regulators expect businesses and institutions around the world - not just in Europe, but also in the Americas, Asia, the Middle East and Africa -- to implement stringent new protections on the personal data they collect on any EU-resident. These requirements include providing security of processing of personal data, with an eye to implementing privacy by design and by default; protecting personal data from a broad variety of potential breaches, including malicious software attacks that could steal, destroy, or alter a user's personal data; and storing personal data only in physical locations and countries that meet EU standards for adequate security. But readiness for GDPR is alarmlingly poor: a recent survey by KMPG Global Legal Services shows that only 13% of companies believe they are fully GDPR-compliant, while barely 22% have begun developing compliance plans.

For these GDPR compliance laggards, Acronis stands ready to help. "Acronis delivers reliable and efficient building-block technologies across our range of data protection products to help businesses improve their GDPR compliance posture", said John Zanni, President of Acronis. "Features like data encryption in transit and at rest provide a foundational basis for security of processing, and the ability to restrict storage and backup of personal data to approved secure locations in our global network of data centers enables compliance with cross-border data transfer rules." Zanni continued, "Meanwhile, our unique Acronis Active Protection feature defends businesses against ransomware, the world's most pervasive malware threat, and as such a major factor in compliance violations attributable to security breaches." Active Protection is an extension to Acronis data protection products that uses machine learning and behavioral analysis to identify ransomware attacks in progress, shut them down, and instantly repair any damage to personal data they have caused.

Acronis also answers GDPR's requirements to reinforce defenses against malware attacks by providing a variety of easy-to-use tools that improve awareness of suspicious activity, including audit logs and dashboards with alerts and reporting. Customizable data retention rules support GDPR's mandate that businesses retain personal data only for the minimum period required. Other features that go above and beyond the GDPR standard include Acronis Notary, which stores unique fingerprints of personal data files in a public blockchain, allowing businesses to verify the integrity of files retrieved from Acronis backup archives or storage.

"No single tech company can promise businesses that it will make them fully-GDPR compliant, said John Zanni, President of Acronis. "But easy, reliable, efficient, secure and private data protection solutions built on Acronis technology go a long way to helping businesses get out of the starting blocks and make real progress on GDPR compliance today. GDPR now represents the gold standard in consumer data privacy protection. Businesses that want to meet that standard in how they defend the privacy of the personal data of their EU customers should consider Acronis, the gold standard in data protection."