Importance of GDPR Compliance in a Development Project?
Tags: security, privacy, startup, computerscience
Published: 2019-08-02 06:34:07

While developing a full stack development project, there are certain things that are mandatory for the developers to keep in mind. With technological advancements and innovations, it is challenging for the developers to build an application that follows the rules of abstraction. Abstraction includes triangulation which helps developers view the software applications with multiple and possible perspectives.

The software security is considered as an extremely important aspect. Its value is not only limited to software protection but also for the reputational protection of an organization that is producing the software. Under certain prospects, software security is the main concern. Software companies have to ensure that their software carries all the security requirements that do not hurt the community in any way. This community can be a business, customers or even the organizational staff.

But the question is, <b>‘what security measures we are talking about?’</b>

Well, irrespective of the clear-cut terminology ‘Information Security’, We are here talking about ‘A secure software that fulfills the GDPR requirements efficiently to ensure Information Security’.

<h3>What is GDPR?</h3>

General Data Protection Regulation (<a href="https://gdpr.eu/">GDPR</a>) is a European Union law for data privacy and security. This law focuses on a large number of data breaches happening due to cloud services and asks small and medium-sized enterprises to secure their systems to avoid data breaches. GDPR compliance is necessary for every business that holds sensitive information of the citizens. In case, any organization fails to comply with the GDPR, it is subjected to heavy fines i.e. 4% of annual global revenue.

GDPR compliance is not specific for the EU, it is applicable in the large part of the world where there are EU’s customers and companies. To avoid reputational damage, it is necessary for organizations to implement software according to GDPR requirements. The responsibility comes towards the ‘developers’. Developers build software and test the software against risk assessment checks. Therefore, a programmer should code while keeping in mind the DGPR requirements to protect the organization from regulatory fines.

<h3>What does a Programmer need to do about it?</h3>

There are some serious GDPR concerns that are necessary for programmers to understand and implement. These concerns are specifically related to programmers who are building applications and deploying them. Under the rules of GDPR, an application or project must assure customer data privacy and security. Now the question is, ‘what can be those concerns?’

The data and personal information of a customer is an asset for an organization that needs to be protected against fraud and malicious activities. For this, an organization must ensure Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) compliance to know that the customers entering into the system have real identities, not involved in money laundering activities. Also, <a href="https://shuftipro.com/kyc-and-aml/">KYC and AML compliance</a> is important to prevent the system from bad actors and cyber attacks. There are some data privacy ethics regarding the use of customer data, it's management, processing, and security. To comply with the <a href="https://gdpr.eu/data-privacy/" >data protection principles</a>, the developer must take into consideration the following aspects of customer privacy:

<h4>Data Transparency</h4>

It is necessary for the organization to conduct an assessment after the development of project completion. This assessment is performed by the developers and quality assurance team. Some privacy concerns that are related to programmers need to be entertained properly. These include:

<ul>
<li>The purpose of data collection</li>
<li>The purpose of data processing</li>
<li>The kind of data which is processed</li>
<li>Controlled data access rights within an organization</li>
<li>Third-party data access rights details</li>
<li>How data is protected?</li>
<li>In what consequences data can be erased?</li>
</ul>

These are the major data protection categories that a developer needs to implement in the development project according to the <a href="https://shuftipro.com/blogs/gdpr-checklist-practices-eu-wants-adopt-business-norms/">GDPR checklist</a>.

<h4>Data Security</h4>

A developer should code in a way that ensures data security by design and by default. This should be done under appropriate technical organizational security measures. These technical measures include:

<ul>
<li>Secure third-party APIs</li> 
<li>The end-to-end encryption</li>
<li>Data anonymization</li>
<li><a href="https://shuftipro.com/blogs/identity-theft-protection-8-security-issues-every-business-needs-to-deal-in-2019/">Online customer verification</a></li> 
<li>Limiting the amount of personal data collection and processing</li>
<li>Deletion of data no longer required</li> 
<li>Relevant information security measures</li>
</ul>

These security and data privacy-related concerns must be handled appropriately from the time the product id developed to the time it is processing data to ensure the GDPR compliance.
 

<h4>User Privacy Rights</h4>

There are some data privacy rights that should be given to the customers so that they could receive and know the data system holds about them. It is necessary as an important privacy concern that customer knows what data system carry and process about them. A developer must assure the commitment with the privacy rights of the customers. These are the major privacy matters that a user should be aware of:

<ul>
<li>How data is processed?</li>
<li>For how long a user’s information is stored in the database and its reason?</li>
<li>Customer Identity verification when data view request comes</li>
<li>In the case of automated data processing, the decision making should fulfill security requirements</li>
</ul>

<h3>Programmers and Data Protection Regulation</h3>  

With new technological innovations, it is important for programmers to choose programming languages, APIs, algorithms, data structures, and security strategies. With proper research, programmers must adopt the development roadmap that complies with all the security needs.
GDPR enforces organizations and so indirectly programmers who are using cloud services in the software development project, to induce data protection and privacy in it. The cloud services are more prone toward cyberattacks, to mitigate the risks it is the responsibility of the programmer to mark down the GDPR checklist appropriately.