Inside the Digital Ecosystem & Third-Party Threats to GDPR

Pete Prestipino
by Pete Prestipino 19 Sep, 2017
Inside the Digital Ecosystem & Third-Party Threats to GDPR
Your company might be working hard (and smart, of course) to ensure it is in compliance with the upcoming GDPR regulations - slated to go into effect in May 2018 - but what about the third-party vendors being used inside your digital ecosystem? 

The Media Trust recently announced the availability of a new SaaS-based service, Digital Vendor Risk Management (DVRM), that may be of interest for those concerned; the solution essentially automates website and mobile app compliance with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation.

The DVRM offering (supported by The Media Trust's centralized vendor network) continuously inspects website data trackers (monitoring any and all code execution) in real-time, and resolves non-compliant activity, which accelerates violation remediation and demonstrates ongoing compliance with the GDPR. 

"Considering up to 75 percent of code executing on websites is provided by third-party vendors, current solutions-tag managers, web application security, consent managers, etc.-provide insufficient insight into the actual code rendering on a consumer's browser. How can you control what you don't see?" says Chris Olson, CEO and co-founder of The Media Trust. "GDPR's impending arrival means it's no longer feasible for IT, risk, security and ad/website operations teams to have an incomplete picture of their digital ecosystem."

When the GDPR goes into effect, enterprises (known as the data controllers) must start detecting and justifying the presence of all third-party data tracking elements-including cookies, pixels and other data-capturing code that identifies consumers and/or their devices-to ensure the data collected is permitted.

What steps are you taking to ensure compliance? 

 ALSO READ: GDPR - The Pandora's Box is Open for Enterprise Websites 
Pete Prestipino
Pete Prestipino
Digital marketing executive with proven experience in all aspects of search engine optimization (SEO), performance-based advertising, consumer-generated/social media, email marketing, lead generation, Web design, usability, and analytics. - 20-year Internet marketing veteran, currently serving as the Digital Marketing Campaign Manager at Antenna Group (formerly Chicago Digital). - Former Editor-In-Chief of Website Magazine, and a regular speaker on Web technology digital marketing strategy - Author of several books on digital marketing Including Web 360: The Fundamentals of Web Success; Affiliate 360: The Fundamentals of Performance Marketing; Domains 360: The Fundamentals of Buying & Selling Domain Names, and SEO 360: The Fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization.