European Data Protection Guidelines for Connected Vehicles A connected vehicle is prone to the same information security concerns as Internet of Things devices but with potentially greater stakes due to a security breach, potentially endangering lives.
If you are a vehicle manufacturer or a tech provider in the mobility space, you have been anxiously awaiting the final guidelines on data protection and connected vehicles from the European Union regulator, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB).
What do the guidelines mean for you in practice?
Are you in scope? The guidelines only apply to you if you are involved in the nonprofessional use of connected vehicles. If your focus is on delivery trucks, professional fleets, etc., you are out of the scope of this document.
Most people’s image of world trade will be a huge container ship similar to the one that was recently stuck in the Suez canal, full of cars, clothes and other goods. However, the modern global economy increasingly runs on huge amounts of data, invisibly passing from one country to another in the blink of an eye.
Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl is the Director General of DIGITALEUROPE.
According to the EU, 85 per cent of global growth is expected to come from outside Europe by 2024. Yet the ability of companies in the EU to transfer data – vital for modern trade – is under threat, both from protectionist practices abroad and an overly strict interpretation of a recent European court ruling. If we don’t fix it soon, this could have profound consequences for our economic recovery.
any other significant economic or social disadvantage.
To protect individuals, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) imposes several obligations on data controllers – namely, they must:
document personal data breaches, including:
the facts relating to the breach;
the effects of the breach; and
the remedial action taken;
notify the supervisory authority of personal data breaches, unless such breaches are unlikely to result in a risk to the rights and freedoms of individuals; and
communicate personal data breaches to data subjects where such breaches are likely to pose a high risk to the rights and freedoms of individuals.
To comply with these obligations, data controllers must carry out a risk assessment and decide how to handle each data breach. The EDPB guidelines constitute practice-oriented, case-based guidance that is based on the experience gained by data protection authorities in recent years.
Regulation laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence
AI Regulation ). The AI Regulation is the first ever legal framework, globally, focused solely on artificial intelligence (
AI ) and has striking similarities to the GDPR. If adopted as drafted, the AI Regulation would have significant consequences for many organisations who develop, sell or use AI systems, including the introduction of a new set of legal obligations and a monitoring and enforcement regime with hefty penalties for non-compliance.
At its heart, the AI Regulation is focused on the identification and monitoring of high risk AI systems and the key questions for organisations who develop, sell or use AI will be whether the AI system in question is likely to be considered high risk and what this means for those high-risk AI systems if the AI Regulation is adopted, as drafted.
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The real industrial revolution is starting now – provided we make the right investments in key technologies and set the right framework conditions.
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Story of the week: The European Commission announced its updated Industrial Strategy on Wednesday (5 May). The first draft was published in March last year, when the COVID-19 pandemic had not yet shown its economic and social impact. Following a request from EU leaders, in this new version the European Commission includes an assessment of Europe’s strategic dependencies, which have been clustered around six main areas.
Two of these areas of vulnerability will be key for Europe’s digital future, namely semiconductors and cloud computing. The most common form of semiconductor is the integrated circuit, commonly known as the chip. The chip is largely used in electronic devices, and the world economy is currently experiencing a severe shortage that might last until the end of the year.