The future of international data transfers

As the pace of technological innovation accelerates and the sharing of data across borders is more prevalent, the collection, creation, use, transfer, and protection of data is increasingly subject to legal, regulatory, political, and societal scrutiny. Financial services are key to helping facilitate the global economic recovery, and in the global digital economy, this is reliant on timely access to data. Facilitating safe and practical methods to ensure data is protected needs new tools to be developed to support the reality of global and dynamic data flows.

However, achieving compliant data sharing is increasing complex, costly and risky. The current mechanisms are heavily focused on legal, binary and simplistic data transfer scenarios (i.e. via contracts) or adequacy assessments (of which there are very few, takes years to implement and can be revoked).

The IRSG has published a new report exploring the current trajectory of current data transfer restrictions, and the impact that this could have on financial services firms and their customers. The paper also propose a number of recommendations as to actions and measures that can be taken to better achieve a consistent level of protection to allow data flows today and in the digital world of the future.