Wait… it’s not World War III coming up. But there’s no safe harbour anymore, and it needs a considerable amount of work which can be huge for your digital business.
As you may know, when you store private data from your subscribers, customers, users, whatever the purpose and your headquarters are in a European Country like sendXmail, for instance, you need to comply with a series of data privacy protocols and laws. One of those laws is that the data that you collect from your audience needs to remain on Safe Harbour.
This means that the European Union needs transparency and privacy security protocol with a determined country. It will then be considered a Safe Harbour to store that personal data on a data centre server located in that same country. Are you following so far?
What has changed this 6th of October is that the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has revoked the Safe Harbour-agreement status with the United States of America. The main reason is related to the suspicious activity made by the NSA searching our private data without care or permission. Edward Snowden uncovered all, and this is just one of the results.
Ok… you might say: “That’s ok. I’ve got my website hosted on a European Union country Data Center. There’s no need for any changes, right?”
What does the Revoking Safe Harbour agreement with the US means for you?
Well, there’s a good chance that you’re using some service hosted on US soil. Consider an Email Marketing Platform, a CRM, a Re-Targeting Advertising System, an Analytics Service… there’s a huge probability that you’re using one of these. If you’re using a SaaS platform, then you might be leaking information to the US, which means that after the 6th of October, you’re doing it against the law.
The repercussions of something like this is yet to be determined. Still, you need to have a complete audit of your Digital presence and understand where exactly you’re keeping the private data you collect from your users.
For instance, on an Email Marketing channel, you need to make sure, in case you’re a European Company, where exactly your subscribers’ data is stored. If there’s any communication between this data and countries out of the Safe Harbor agreement, you need to take action and find an alternative solution ASAP. At the same time, check your SaaS provider and find out if they have a European based server system or implementing a solution. It’s vital to avoid any illegal claims or fines.
By the way, at sendXmail, we have several solutions to solve this situation. Please, feel free to ask our team.