The data protection conference has decided on a concept for the assessment of the GDPR fine in proceedings against companies, which specifies the abstract catalog of criteria from Art. 83 GDPR. The aim is to obtain a transparent and case-by-case form of fine assessment. The concept is intended to serve as a national guideline for the calculation of fines until the European Data Protection Committee issues Union-wide harmonized guidelines.

Many employers have an interest in receiving a police clearance certificate from their applicants and future employees to check whether they have already had a criminal record. But is that even permissible? We will explain this fact in this article.

As early as October 2019, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that when a website is accessed, the setting of cookies requires the active consent of the website visitor. This does not include cookies that are technically necessary to ensure the functionality of the website. The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has now updated its guidelines on consent for websites and once again emphasized the urgent need for correct cookie consent. Learn more about this in our blog article.

On May 25, 2018, the GDPR came into force and caused a lot of dust in some companies. The excitement was great back then, but it has now subsided. Many detailed questions that were still open in 2018 have been clarified. Other problems are still waiting for a clear positioning by the supervisory authorities or a court decision. We look back on the past 2 years and highlight some highlights in data protection.

With the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation on May 25, 2018 and the new Federal Data Protection Act, numerous companies had to appoint a data protection officer (DPO). The company can choose an internal or an external data protection officer. There is no general answer to whether an internal or external data protection officer is the better choice. We clarify the difference between external and internal DPOs. We’ll also name a few advantages and disadvantages that each selection can have.

Data protection in Austria does not work without the GDPR! The Austrian data protection supervisory authority clarifies the relationship between the data protection sanctions. In Austria, too, it is not mandatory that in the event of a data protection breach, a data protection warning must first be issued and a second breach may only be punished with a fine. Rather, a fine is possible even for the first breach.

Online translation tools offer a convenient way of having technical terms automatically translated into or from another language in both professional and private everyday life. Depending on the provider, such tools can also be used to translate long texts or at least passages of text. In the meantime, online translation tools are constantly being further developed using artificial intelligence processes, so that the end user receives ever better results from their translation. Employees in the professional environment are also increasingly making use of the support of such tools. From a data protection point of view, however, such services involve risks. Find out in our blog article which tools you can use and to what extent to ensure data protection-compliant use.

The corona pandemic has often forced companies, more or less overnight, to let employees work from home. In order to maintain operations and, above all, internal and external communication, video conferencing has become the new communication standard worldwide, at an almost unbelievable speed. But which video conferencing system is the best choice in terms of data protection compliance?

The Higher Administrative Court of Münster ruled on February 5th, 2020 that Gmail is not a telecommunications service. Gmail can therefore be seen as classic order processing and is therefore subject to the special requirements of the GDPR. In the following blog article, we’ll tell you what you have to do to use Gmail in a GDPR-compliant manner.