The most sweeping data privacy regulation in a generation isfinally here, with a compliance date of May 25, 2018. Although it'sbeen two years since the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was adoptedby the European Union Parliament on April 16, 2016, it would be astretch to say that businesses worldwide are adequately prepared.In fact, the global implications of the regulation appear to becatching some U.S. companies off guard; it seems the EU'sindustry-neutral data privacy regulation was not on the regulatoryradar for many businesses used to following the rule-making of U.S.agencies.

Some public reports of preparedness paint a rosy picture. Forinstance, in a July 2017 global survey of Fortune 500 and FTSE350 general counsel and chief security officers, 94 percent ofrespondents from the U.K. and 98 percent from the U.S. reportedtheir company was on a strong pace to meet the regulatoryrequirements by this month. However, the first quarter of 2018 sawan exponential increase in webinars and seminars about GDPR, whichsuggests that some organizations are still scrambling to evaluatethe potential implications of the new rules.