What Is the EU General Data Protection Regulation?

It has been a long time coming, but the new EU data security and privacy law, also known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), is finally close to being finalized and will likely go into effect sometime in 2017. This article includes an outline of the GDPR and why it is important for organizations to not panic over changes to the existing data rules; the current Data Protection Directive (DPD) and why the EU felt the need to change to the GDPR; some of the more important vocabulary included with the new law; and outlines of the new articles contained with the GDPR and how they will affect organizations.