Changes to EU data protection regulations: How can cloud service providers prepare?

The proposed General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is expected to replace 20-year-old regulations (the current rules came into place in 1995) and enable harmonisation of data protection across the EU sometime next year. This will bring with it a much stricter compliance requirement and harsher consequences for failure to comply. How harsh? At the sharpest end of the punishment stick for those organisations breaching the rules that could be five per cent of global turnover. While the regulation will put much of the emphasis on the organisation itself to ensure such compliance, it also requires businesses to work with a service provider which can guarantee data is processed in compliance with the data protection rules.