GDPR Anniversary: Farewell to Global Data Lakes

This month marks the fourth anniversary of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). As we reflect on our world’s privacy journey, suffice it to say that the regulations are now a driving force behind an organization’s data management and analytics strategy.

Privacy is now a top concern for individuals, while organizations still struggle to balance data privacy with the data analytics demand of the modern economy. We’ve seen US states such as California passing their own privacy laws, making in practice privacy by design a must-do to be able to navigate the complexity of the privacy regulatory landscape.

At the global level, it has become obvious that attempting to redirect data movements from one location to another to try to achieve compliance after the fact is a real challenge and many have chosen to ignore compliance even if it means risking fines and moving on. This strategy of negligence will expose those who choose to neglect to address the foundation of the problem: the data architecture.

The Demise of the Global Data Lake?

Recent developments triggered by data protection activism suggests that we may be close to a turning point with GDPR. Centralized stores of raw data, also known as global data lakes, are now an endangered species and could be relics of the past sooner than we think.

In a post-Schrems II world, international dat