The clock is ticking toward the May 2018 deadline to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which harmonizes data privacy laws across Europe to protect all data belonging to EU citizens and residents. The regulation applies to organizations that operate within the EU as well as those that sell or market to the EU—essentially the rest of the world.

Some enterprises may only see the immediate burden of meeting GDPR’s requirements. However, savvy organizations understand that the technology platform they implement to comply with the regulation can set the stage for new digital business models that drive revenue and growth. To help these enterprises accelerate these efforts, WSO2 today debuted its Spring 2018 Release, featuring product developments designed to offer platform-wide support for GDPR.

The Spring 2018 Release is the first set of synchronized product updates being rolled out as part of WSO2’s new quarterly release of new and enhanced capabilities across the platform aimed at addressing the real-world business and technology demands enterprises face today.

Let’s take a closer look at the challenges and opportunities that GDPR brings, as well how WSO2’s product features and services empower organizations to fast-track their GDPR compliance and enable agile digital transformation initiatives.

The Immediate GDPR Challenge

GDPR requires that organizations conducting business in the EU adopt internal policies and implement measures that meet, in particular, the principles of data protection by design and data protection by default. What this essentially means is that enterprises need to ensure all personal data collection, processing, storage and destruction measures are designed to secure privacy. It doesn’t just end there. Organizations must also be able to demonstrate proof of consent and allow individuals to review the status of their consent and opt out if they choose to do so.

The immediate challenge for enterprises is finding a solution to help tune their identity and access management (IAM) and ensure secure API management quickly so that they can address the new requirements of GDPR. These include customer data privacy, a self-care portal to enable customer rights defined by GDPR, and full-scale consent lifecycle management. The solution also must support secure identity provisioning across systems in a GDPR-compliant manner.

The Long-Term Benefit

While meeting their near-term GDPR requirements, organizations have the potential to look beyond compliance and leverage the strong data protection fostered by GDPR to support their digital transformation efforts aimed innovating new services and building brand loyalty with customers. To make this move, organizations need a cohesive platform that has the capabilities to make businesses programmable through APIs, program the business using integration systems, maintain solid identity and security practices, and increase agility through the adoption of open source and cloud systems.

The WSO2 Advantage for Capitalizing on GDPR

WSO2 has the expertise to be your trusted technology partner, not just to make sure you clear the GDPR hurdle, but also to ensure your organization has the ability to leverage the wider benefits brought by this regulation. With the Spring 2018 Release of the WSO2 platform, you have a digital transformation solution that capitalizes on the data protection measures of GDPR to accelerate your business growth via a digital innovation platform.

Using the WSO2 platform, you can capitalize on the technology trusted by globally recognized brands across a range of industries—including eBay, Experian, Verifone, BNY Mellon, West Interactive, Motorola, Transport for London, and StubHub—to:

Comply with the GDPR regulations quickly via platform-wide support that helps you to ensure all personal data collection, processing, storage, and destruction messages are designed to secure privacy.

Look beyond compliance and enhance digital transformation with a cloud-native, open source platform composed of the key technology enablers required for the agility and innovation you need to maximize your competitiveness.

Technology Enablers for GDPR and Digital Transformation

Within the WSO2 platform, key technology enablers for meeting GDPR regulatory requirements and setting the stage for digital transformation include:

Identity and access management in the Spring 2018 Release is delivered via a solution that supports secure identity provisioning across systems in a GDPR-compliant manner. Consent management and privacy toolkit in WSO2 Identity Server enable enterprise data controllers to accelerate their organization’s GDPR compliance. It also introduces personal information export capabilities and support for encrypting OpenID Connect identity tokens. Together, these new features address the different aspects of individual rights defined in GDPR, such as the “right to be forgotten” and the “right to personal data portability” among others, in order to ensure the protection of personal information.

Secure API management in the Spring 2018 Release addresses the new requirements of GDPR, such as customer data privacy, a self-care portal to enable the customer rights defined by GDPR, and full-scale consent lifecycle management. These capabilities can now be deployed via a hybrid cloud solution that provides organizations a local gateway rather than a cloud API gateway. This enables users to have the best of both worlds and ensures all API calls happen locally, thus increasing security and minimizing latency. Moreover, it’s easy to maintain as users; just supply their cloud credentials, and it pulls configuration and changes from the cloud.

Integration capabilities in the Spring 2018 Release provide the ability to seamlessly connect and manage multiple identities across legacy systems, SaaS applications, services, and APIs. This enables organizations to support even the most demanding integration requirements across services. Key capabilities include the required tools to connect to a wide variety of protocols and security mechanisms as well as streamline integration APIs in a secure manner.

Streaming analytics capabilities empower organizations to derive meaningful insights with available data. The Spring 2018 version of the product includes functionality to support GDPR compliance, such as the ability to anonymize both login user information and any data stored in databases.

A customized open banking solution, first launched for the financial industry in August 2017, provides the functionality to comply with both GDPR and the European Union’s second Payment Services Directive (PSD2). It also empowers companies to go beyond traditional banking by offering third-party services and innovating new digital offerings.

In addition to the enabling technologies delivered through the WSO2 platform, WSO2 is offering a series of seven webinars to help organizations accelerate their GDPR compliance.

Now is the time to start complying with GDPR—and lay the groundwork for the new digital business models it will enable. WSO2 brings you the technology, expertise and services to get up and running quickly and cost-effectively, along with the agility to capitalize on digital transformation opportunities as they emerge.