The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will go into force on May 25, 2018. Every organization — regardless of its location — doing business with EU customers will need to make changes to its oversight, technology, processes, and people to comply with the new rules. But where should you start? This report helps security and privacy professionals understand five core GDPR requirements and two related changes they need to start tackling today.

Fear of data misuse has led to both general and industry-specific data-privacy regulations worldwide that many organizations now must meet, and it’s important to embrace their requirements. The role of data-holding organizations has increasingly shifted to being stewards of information, in particular in the United States and the European Union (EU). And failure to comply with regulations can mean not only reputational damage, but substantial fines and even jail time. Just meeting compliance mandates, though, may not help you actively spot and stop a data breach.

Database security is a broad section of information security that concerns itself with protecting databases against compromises of their integrity, confidentiality and availability. It covers various security controls for the information itself stored and processed in database systems, underlying computing and network infrastructures, as well as applications accessing the data.

Guardium software provides a comprehensive solution for physical, virtual and cloud infrastructures through centralized, automated security controls across heterogeneous environments. Guardium helps streamline compliance and reduce risk, and offers installready images for IaaS deployments on major cloud platforms, such as IBM SoftLayer®, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services, and operating across Microsoft Windows, UNIX and Linux environments. The flexible Guardium architecture allows for several different deployment models. You can choose the system architecture that works for your enterprise: Guardium components can all be deployed in the cloud, or you can choose to keep some of those components, such as a central manager, on-premises.

Data—dynamic, in demand and distributed—is challenging to secure. But you need to protect sensitive data, whether it’s stored on-premises, off-site, or in big-data, private- or hybrid-cloud environments. Protecting sensitive data can take many forms, but nearly any organization needs to keep its data accessible, protect data from loss or compromise, and comply with a raft of regulations and mandates. These can include the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and the European Union (EU). General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Even in the cloud, where you may have less immediate control, you must still control your sensitive data—and compliance mandates still apply.