In 2016 we achieved the EU-US Privacy Shield Certification and in 2017 we attained the Swiss-US Privacy Shield Certification. Both of these were new frameworks that emerged after the previous Safe Harbor Framework was struck down by an EU court.
October is our renewal month and I’m happy to announce that we worked with our privacy management solutions partner, Truste, and successfully renewed both Swiss-US and EU-US Privacy Shield certifications. You can get more information on the Privacy Shield program at privacyshield.gov.
Earlier this year there was a LOT of privacy policy updates due to the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) coming into effect in May 2018. So you may ask, why bother with the Privacy Shield Framework? That’s a good question that we asked ourselves too.
The GDPR is brand new and, while the agreement itself was finalized, its interpretation and its related business practices are still evolving. At this time there is no solutions provider, including our partner Truste, that offers an official GDPR certification. I haven’t seen any “GDPR certified” seals on any website out there. Let us know if you see anything like that.
But since there is an existing official certification process for the Privacy Shield Frameworks, we believed that it was important for us to renew our Privacy Shield status to demonstrate our commitment to customer privacy. I hope you agree as well.