Joe Murphy (joemurphyccep@gmail.com) is a Senior Advisor at Compliance Strategists, SCCE’s Director of Public Policy, and Editor-in-Chief of Compliance & Ethics Professional magazine.

The world is buzzing about the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR); Europe now sets the global standard for protecting privacy. GDPR is a pervasive regulatory system that tends to stick to anything that touches it. It is detailed and requires knowledge of the special terminology of privacy.

It also is backed by huge fines. The privacy bureaucrats can extract up to 4% of a company’s global turnover for violations. I have been told that they will probably not go after such large amounts of money in small cases. But most governments are quite fond of revenue, and the temptation under this amorphous area of regulation may be overwhelming.