News » The GDPR Doomsday Clock strikes a minute closer to midnight 2017-03-20

Article taken from CityA.M.

The lugubrious ticking of my internal GDPR Doomsday Clock struck a minute closer to midnight last week.

Tick, it chimed: “only 5 per cent of marketers fully understand what the GDPR means for their business.” Tock, it said: “50 per cent say they don’t really understand it at all, or [literally] don’t know.” The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) drop a statistical A-bomb in my inbox, and all hope of anyone making sense of the biggest ever overhaul of data regulation, is gone.

It’s becoming painfully clear that many businesses – whether marketers or else – have neither the time, resources or know-how to deal with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. Implementation is 431 days away, and yet, the CIM/ YouGov poll finds just 11 per cent of businesses already have systems in place to ensure compliance. Almost a third of marketers are “clueless” as to whether their business has taken any steps to ensure they are so.

There’s been much talk of Silver Bullets in the last couple of years, but presently, businesses need a Gatling Gun full of them to mow down a hoard of political and economic issues before they even think about crossing this regulatory minefield.

There’s too much else happening. It’s noisy, so fingers are in ears. Subsequently, and distressingly, 9 per cent of marketers say there “have been mentions of it, but nothing has been formally discussed,” while 16 per cent “do not think GDPR is relevant to them.” As someone contemplating the scale of the approaching regulation daily, it is astounding. Am I going mad?

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