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June 1, 2018

Google, KPMG Partner on Cloud Analytics, GDPR Compliance

Google is partnering with consulting firm KPMG International to offer a range of cloud computing, AI and analytics technologies along with assessment and compliance features tied to new European data privacy regulations.

The partners said this week KPMG would offer customers integration capabilities for deploying Google Cloud platform along with advanced data analytics and machine learning tools. The cloud platform initially includes two current KPMG services for managing customer data and privacy under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that took effect on May 25.

The GDPR assessment is designed to help cloud users address data privacy requirements by reducing costs and streamlining compliance efforts, KPMG said Thursday (May 31).

The partners are offering cloud-based data privacy compliance tools as companies continue to scramble to address the GDPR rules. Observers suspect European regulators may allow a grace period to comply as long as companies demonstrate they are not “leaving the front door wide open, covering it up and showing no evidence of trying to comply,” said Nigel Tozer, solutions director at Commvault (NASDAQ (CVLT), a data protection and cloud management vendor.

Such willful non-compliance would “probably get a heavy-handed response” from regulators, Tozer added. “What we will see in the future is tighter definitions to some of non-definitive language used in the regulation, and officially sanctioned—by the regulator—tests on compliance.”

EU regulators are expected to initially focus on data breaches that cause “material harm to individuals, and flagrant disregard of the regulation that seeks to exploit individuals’ data without consent,” Tozer said.

The potential grace period gives cloud vendors such as Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) an opportunity to attract customers that are still not technically in compliance with the GDPR

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