IBM prepares clients for GDPR with Cloud Risk Insights

IBM is targeting companies with critical data in the cloud or on-prem that could be at risk of being breached

IBM plans to offer a new product that will protect ‘critical' data from ‘leakage, loss and unauthorised modification'.

IBM Cloud Data Protection Risk Insights is designed for security and compliance teams, who will be able to use it to find where sensitive data resides - both on-prem and in the cloud. They will also be able to determine how vulnerable that data is to security risks.

The software will show a prioritised list of risk exposures in data sources; it will also ‘provide guidance' on how to minimise risk and protect sensitive data from internal and external threats.

IBM will distribute Cloud Data Protection Risk Insights as a Cloud Services product, and is especially targeting companies seeing to comply with the GDPR (although we were recently told that the regulation is too big for a single technical solution).

The company said that ‘Cloud Data Protection Risk Insights intends to provide the following capabilities:

• Connect to cloud and on-premises data sources in a secure way;
• Discover sensitive and personal data in data sources; and
• Identify data security risk, such as exposures to various severe and critical vulnerabilities.'

Many of the firms that claim to be GDPR-compliant are actually not, a study found last year, tallying with Computing's own research, and so some sort of solution is necessary. There are just over 70 days left until the regulation comes into force, when these companies could face fines of as much as four per cent of global turnover.

If you're still not fully ready for the upcoming regulation, make sure to read our guide on the best resources to prepare for it.