data protection law

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

the body of legal rules governing the collection, processing, storage, transfer, and deletion of personal information about identifiable individuals, setting out the rights of data subjects and the obligations of organisations that handle personal data; the EU General Data Protection Regulation, which came into force in May 2018 and has been adopted as a model by jurisdictions worldwide, establishes core principles including lawfulness and transparency, purpose limitation, data minimisation, accuracy, storage limitation, and security, along with individual rights to access, rectification, erasure, portability, and objection; data protection law intersects with cybersecurity regulation, consumer protection, competition law, and human rights law, and is enforced by independent national supervisory authorities with power to impose substantial fines; the global landscape of data protection is increasingly fragmented, as countries including China, India, and Brazil have enacted distinct national frameworks