Nearly 40% of UK Firms Not Ready for New EU Data Protection Legislation - Report

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Nearly 40 percent of UK companies have reservations about implementing the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), with only three weeks left until the new regulations come into force, the UK Institute of Directors (IOD) said in a report on Monday.

"Only 6 in 10 company directors say they are confident their organization will be ‘fully compliant’ with new data protection laws set to come in later this month… Many business leaders are also less sure about how the new rules will affect their firms, with around 40% reporting they are not confident or unsure as to how GDPR will impact their company," the report said.

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The report stressed that the companies' confidence in their potential compliance with the new rules had declined over the past six months. In August, a total of 43 percent of respondents expressed absolute confidence in their full compliance with the rules, and only 16 percent said the same in April.

The poll was conducted among 699 respondents on April 12-26.

On May 25, the EU Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of personal data will be replaced by the GDPR, which seeks to boost the protection of data of EU citizens. The United Kingdom, which is to stay in the European Union until March 29, 2019, will also implement the GDPR.