Compliance Solution
GDPR & CCPA compliance
The same, or different?
What is GDPR?
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect in 2018. It grants individuals rights over their personal data — including the right to access, correct, and delete it — and applies to any organisation that handles EU residents’ data, regardless of where the organisation is based.
Non-compliance carries fines of up to €20 million or 4% of global annual revenue, whichever is higher.
What you need to know about GDPR compliance
The regulations apply to the European Economic Area
The GDPR impacts every entity everywhere that holds or uses European (including Iceland, Lichtenstein, and Norway) personal data.
Companies can expect stricter fines if found to be mismanaging personal Data
Any person who has suffered damage as a result of an infringement (material or immaterial) will have the right to receive compensation from the controller or processor for the damage suffered.
All organisations are expected to reassess their Data processing controls
The mandate includes large enterprises, small & medium business (SMBs), and even sole proprietors. All organisations are required to implement a plan to be compliant.
Good data governance practices need to be shown
To achieve data privacy, organisations require ‘privacy by design’, ‘privacy by default’, and ‘accountability.’ Without undue delay and, where feasible, this needs to be shown no later than 72 hours after having become aware of a data breach.
What is CCPA?
The California Consumer Privacy Act, enforced from July 1, 2020, is the most significant US privacy law to date. It applies to businesses operating in California and grants consumers four core rights:
- The right to know about the personal information a business collects about them
- The right to know how information collected is used and shared
- The right to delete personal information collected from them (with some exceptions)
- The right to opt-out of sale of their personal information
What you need to know about CCPA compliance
Business operating outside of California can still be affected
CCPA applies to all for-profit companies that collect, share, or sell the personal data of California consumers and either process data on more than 50k consumers, have more than $25m in annual revenue, or have more than 50% of annual revenue from data sales.
Consumers have the right to claim damages
Businesses should be aware that consumers can exercise a Private Right of Action (PRA) if certain types of personal data is leaked. Consumers have the right to claim damages up to $750 per person for distress alone with damages uncapped for more material harm.
Failure to comply to requests for deletion results in fines
Consumers are in control and are able to request for their data to be deleted. This may sound logical but in reality, it can be difficult for organisations to comply with these requests. Unfortunately, under the CCPA, failure to comply can result in fines.
De-identify to retain behavioural and historical data
To fulfil requests for deletion while maintaining the value of data, the regulator has confirmed that it’s possible to take data out of the scope of CCPA by de-identifying data. That means, you can still retain behavioural and historical data for future analysis.
Why choose SecureAge for GDPR & CCPA compliance?
Most organisations treat GDPR and CPPA as a reporting exercise. SecureAge treats them as a design requirement. Here’s what that difference looks like in practice.
Files don’t stay in one place. They get emailed, synced to cloud storage, copied to laptops, shared with prtners. Taditional security protects storage locations. Securege protects the file itself — in transit , in use, and at rest.
Your GDPR and CCPA obligations follow your data, regardless of where it ends up.
The biggest compliance risk isn’t malicious intent — it’s human error. Employees who find security tools disruptive will work around them, creating the very gaps that lead to violations.
SecureAge’s encryption runs silently in the background. Staff open, edit, and share files exactly as they always have. The protection is invisible. The compliance isn’t optional.
Compliance readiness doesn’t have to mean a costly infrastructure overhaul. SecureAge deploys on both new and legacy systems, works alongside existing applications, and requires no changes to your current IT setup.
Asymmetric PKI encryption is applied at the file level — so protection is immediate, regardless of what platform or storage environment you’re running.
GDPR and CCPA differ in scope and jurisdiction, but share a core principle: personal data must be protected, and organisatiosns must be able to prove it.
SecureAge’s audit trails, access controls, and encryption coverage give you the documentation and the protection to satisfy both frameworks — from a single platform, with a single deployment.