In my previous blogs, I spoke about GDPR and use cases where Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can provide some quick wins and help organizations work towards GDPR adherence without making extensive changes to their processes and LOB  applications. In this blog, I will discuss areas where RPA can provide long-term compliance.

With the GDPR, there will be an impact on service delivery and how personal data is handled across organizations. The full implication of GDPR for businesses is yet to be understood, but RPA  can help compliance and security for PII without significant application overhauls. GDPR introduces reporting of data breaches within 72 hours to relevant supervisory authority and in high-risk cases, to affected individuals. An integrated AI-RPA based solution can be deployed to constantly monitor for PII access signals and trigger escalation on any predefined signs of a data breach.

GDPR imposes the same legal obligation on both Controllers and Processor. GDPR defines a Controllers as an organization that ‘determines the purposes and means of the processing of personal data’. A Processor is defined in GDPR as an organization ‘which processes personal data on behalf of the Controller’, including outsourcing providers, managed service providers, cloud service providers etc. As a long-term strategy, Controllers can explore RPA to complete some of the outsourced processes in-house hence reducing data transfer outside the EU and in turn chances of data breaches.

RPA works on top of the existing LOB applications, within the secure domain of the company’s IT infrastructure. Popular RPA vendors are already compliant with the GDPR, adhering to security best practices while building RPA Bots, in turn strengthening the overall compliance with GDPR.