Data protection at the HSZG on the basis of the EU GDPR

At a well-attended event in Lecture Hall 2 of the Peter-Dierich-Building on June 20, 2018, the university’s Data Protection Officer (DPO), Prof. Dr. Uwe Wendt, provided information on the new data protection regulations and their implications for the university’s operations.

On May 25, 2018, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect, providing the member states of the European Union with a uniform data protection law. What does this mean for the Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences? In his presentation, Data Protection Officer Prof. Wendt explained the fundamentals of data protection, from its origins in the Hippocratic Oath (400 B.C.) through the Federal Constitutional Court’s 1983 ruling on the census to the European General Data Protection Regulation.

Following this historical overview, he addressed the principles governing the processing of personal data, such as lawfulness, processing in good faith, transparency, purpose limitation, data minimization, accuracy, storage limitation, integrity, and confidentiality.

In addition to the rights of data subjects, the presentation focused primarily on the obligations of data controllers. The differences from the previous data protection framework under the Saxon Data Protection Act (SächDSG) were also highlighted. Furthermore, Prof. Wendt outlined fundamental requirements for information security as a prerequisite for data protection.

This was followed by a lively discussion on various use cases and implementations of the new data protection law.

Due to the high level of interest, Prof. Wendt plans to repeat the lecture at the Görlitz campus at the start of the winter semester in October.