GDPR, Europe’s digital privacy legislation passed in 2018, replaces the 1995 EU Data Protection Directive. It is rules designed to give EU citizens more control over their personal data & strengthen privacy rights. It aims to simplify the regulatory environment for business and citizens.

To read about other Certificates , compliances and Security in VoIP which summaries

• HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) ,
• SOX( Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002),
• Privacy Related Compliance certificates like COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act ) of 1998,
• CPNI (Customer Proprietary Network Information) 2007,
• GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)  in European Union 2018,
• California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) 2019,
• Personal Data Protection Bill (PDP) – India 2018 and
• also specifications against Robocalls and SPIT ( SPAM over Internet Telephony) among others

Multinational companies will predominantly be regulated by the supervisory authority where they have their “main establishment” or headquarter. However, the issue concerning GDPR is that it not only applies to any organisation operating within the EU, but also to any organisations outside of the EU which offer goods or services to customers or businesses in the EU.

Key Principles of GDPR are

• Lawfulness, fairness and transparency
• Purpose limitation
• Data minimisation
• Accuracy
• Storage limitation
• Integrity and confidentiality (security)
• Accountability

GDPR consists of 7 projects (DPO, Impact assessment, Portability, Notification of violations, Consent, Profiling, Certification and Lead authority) that will strengthen the control of personal data throughout the European Union.

Stakeholders

stakeholders of data protection regulation are
Data Subject – an individual, a resident of the European Union, whose personal data are to be protected

Data Controller – an institution, business or a person processing the personal data e.g. e-commerce website.

Data Protection Officer – a person appointed by the Data Controller responsible for overseeing data protection practices.

Data Processor – a subject (company, institution) processing a data on behalf of the controller. It can be an online CRM app or company storing data in the cloud.

Data Authority – a public institution monitoring implementation of the regulations in the specific EU member country.

Extra-Territorial Scope

Any VoIP service provider may feel that since they are not based out of EU such as officially headquartered in the Asia Pacific or US region they may not be legally binding to GDPR. However, GDPR expands the territorial and material scope of EU data protection law.  It applies to both controllers and processors established in the EU, and those outside the EU, who offer goods or services to or monitor EU data subject.

VoIP service providers as Data Processors

A processor is a “person, public authority, agency or other body which processes personal data on behalf of the controller”.
Most VoIP service providers are multinational in nature with services offered directly or indirectly to all regions. The GDPR imposes direct statutory obligations on data processors, which means they will be subject to direct enforcement by supervisory authorities, fines, and compensation claims by data subjects. However, a processor’s liability will be limited to the extent that it has not complied with it’s statutory and contractual obligations.

Data minimization – It is now a good practise to store and process as less user’s personal data as necessary to render our services effectively. Also to maintain data for only a stipulated time ( approx 90 days of CDR for call details and logs )

Record Keeping, Accountability and governance

To show compliance with GDPR, a service provider maintain detailed records of processing activities. Also, they must implement technological and organisational measures to ensure, and be able to demonstrate, that processing is performed in accordance with the GDPR. Some ways to apply these are :

• Contracts: putting written contracts in place with organisations that process personal data on your behalf
• maintaining documentation of your processing activities
• Organisational policies focus on Data protection by design and default – two-factor auth, strong passwords to guard against brute-force, encryption, focus on security in architecture
• Risk analysis and impact assessments: for uses of personal data that are likely to result in a high risk to individuals’ interests
• Audit by Data protection officer
• Clear Codes of conduct
• Certifications

As for a VOIP landscape thankfully every call or message session is followed by a CDR ( Calld Detail Record ) or MDR ( Message Detail Record).

Additionally, assign a unique signature to every data-access client the VoIP system and log every read/write operation carried out on data stores whether persistent datastores or system caches.

Privacy Notices to Subjects

User profile data such as :

• Basic identity information, name, address and ID numbers
• Web data such as location, IP address, cookie data and RFID tags
• Health and genetic data
• Bio-metric data
• Racial or ethnic data
• Political opinions
• Sexual orientation

is protected strictly under GDPR rules

A service provider should provide indepth information to data subjects when collecting their personal data, to ensure fairness and transparency. They must provide the information in an easily accessible form, using clear and plain language.

Consent

The GDPR introduces a higher bar for relying on consent , requiring clear affirmative action. Silence, pre ticked boxes or inactivity will not be sufficient to constitute consent. Data subjects can withdraw their consent at any time, and it must be easy for them to do so.

Lawful basis for processing Data now include

In Article 6 of the GDPR , there are six available lawful bases for processing.

(a) Consent: the individual has given clear consent for you to process their personal data for a specific purpose.

(b) Contract: the processing is necessary for a contract you have with the individual, or because they have asked you to take specific steps before entering into a contract.

(c) Legal obligation: the processing is necessary for you to comply with the law (not including contractual obligations).

(d) Vital interests: the processing is necessary to protect someone’s life.

(e) Public task: the processing is necessary for you to perform a task in the public interest or for your official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law.

(f) Legitimate interests: the processing is necessary for your legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of a third party, unless there is a good reason to protect the individual’s personal data which overrides those legitimate interests.

File such as PCAPS , Recordings and transcripts of calls hold sensitive information from end users , these should be encryoted and inaccssible to even the dev teams within the org without explicit consent of end user .

Individuals’ Rights

The GDPR provides individuals with new and enhanced rights to Data subjects who will have more control over the processing of their personal data. A data subject access request can only be refused if it is manifestly unfounded or excessive, in particular because of its repetitive character.

Rights of Data Subjets include

• Right of Access
• Right to Rectification
• Right to Be Forgotten
• Right to Restriction of Processing
• Right to Data Portability
• Right to Object
• Right to Object to Automated Decisionmaking

For a VoIP service provider if a user opts for redaction then none of his calls or messages should be traced in logs . Also replace distinguishable end user identifier such as phone number and sip uri with *** charecters

Provide option for “Account Deletion” and purge account – If a user wished to close his/her account , his/her detaisl should be deleted form the sustem except for the bare bones detaisl which are otherwise required for legal , taxation and accounting requirnments

Breach Notification

A controller is a “person, public authority, agency or other body which, alone or jointly with others, determines the purposes and means of processing of personal data”,

A controller will have a mandatory obligation to notify his supervisory authority of a data breach within 72 hours unless the breach is unlikely to result in a risk to the rights of data subjects. Will also have to notify affected data subjects where the breach is likely to result in a “high risk” to their rights. A processor, however, will only be obliged to report data breaches to controllers

International Data Transfers

Data transfers to countries outside the EEA(European Economic Area) continue to be prohibited unless that country ensures an adequate level of protection. The GDPR retains existing transfer mechanisms and provides for additional mechanisms, including approved codes of conduct and certification schemes.

The GDPR prohibits any non-EU court, tribunal or regulator from ordering the disclosure of personal data from EU companies unless it requests such disclosure under an international agreement, such as a mutual legal assistance treaty.

One of the biggest challenges for a service provider is the identification & categorization of GDPR impacted data sets in disparate locations across the enterprise. A dev team must flag tables, attributes and other data objects that are categorically covered under GDPR regulations and then ensure that they are not transferred to a server outside of EU.

In the present age of Virtual shared server instance, cloud computing and VoIP protocol it is operational a very tough task for a communication service provider to ensure that data is not transferred outside of EU such as a VoIP call from origination in US and destination in EU will require information exchanges via SDP, vcard , RTP stream via media proxies etc.

Sanctions

The GDPR provides supervisory authorities with wide-ranging powers to enforce compliance, including the power to impose significant fines. You will face fines of up to €20m or 4% of your total worldwide annual turnover of the preceding financial year. In addition, data subjects can sue you for pecuniary or non-pecuniary damages (i.e. distress). Supervisory authorities will have a discretion as to whether to impose a fine and the level of that fine.

Data Protection officer (DPO)

Under the terms of GDPR, an organisation must appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO) if it carries out large-scale processing of special categories of data, carries out large scale monitoring of individuals such as behaviour tracking or is a public authority.

Reference :

• Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation
• Twilio GDPR whitepaper – https://s3.amazonaws.com/ahoy-assets.twilio.com/Whitepapers/Twilio_Whitepaper_GDPR.pdf
• https://gdpr-info.eu/
• gdpr.eu – https://gdpr.eu/