What is GDPR Compliance? A Quick Guide to Data Privacy and Regulations for Non-Prod

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is at the core of Europe’s digital privacy legislation. Adopted by the European Parliament in April 2016 and put into effect in May 2018, GDPR is a set of rules designed to give European Union (EU) citizens more control over their data.  

GDPR-compliant businesses are required to protect the personal data and privacy of EU citizens. Essentially, it creates an imperative to evaluate and update how companies store, manage, transfer, and secure data, and companies that fail to achieve compliance will be subject to stiff penalties and fines.  

I’ve worked with many organisations that set out to mitigate risk, prevent breaches, and avoid these tough fines. These organisations want to meet regulatory requirements — and Perforce Delphix wants to help. In this blog, I’ll break down GDPR compliance solutions, requirements and risks, and how to be GDPR compliant. 

What Does GDPR Cover?

Who must follow the rules and requirements of GDPR, and what kind of information is subject to it? Here’s an at-a-glance list: 

What Organisations are Subject to GDPR?

• Each member of the EU 
• Organisations doing business or offering products/services in the EU 
• Organisations that monitorbehaviour of people in the EU 
• Governments and private companies in the EU 

What Type of Information is Subject to GDPR?

Any personal info that can be used to identify an individual, including: 

• Names 
• Birth dates 
• Addresses (physical and email) 
• Location data 
• National identification numbers (i.e., social security) 
• Credit card numbers 
• Health and genetic information 
• Biometric data (facial recognition, fingerprints, behaviour, etc.) 
• Race or ethnicity 
• Sexual identity or orientation 

The regulation gives data subjects (EU citizens) extended rights to access, correct, and erase their personal data, as well as to withdraw consent to its use.  

What are the GDPR Requirements?

There are a variety of GDPR controls and practices — informed by its seven principles detailed in Chapter 2 of the regulation — for the management and monitoring of data subjects and personal data. Let me break them down for you: 

1. Required Data Protection Role

GDPR introduced the required role of Data Protection Officer. This employee — who must have expert professional knowledge in data protection law and IT security — helps the company work toward data privacy law compliance, monitor processes like data protection impact assessments, and collaborate with supervisory authorities.  

Considering the Perforce Delphix State of Data Compliance and Security Report found that 100% of surveyed organisations use sensitive data in analytics environments, this position can play a vital part in monitoring personal data that’s being used outside of production and therefore at greater risk. 

2. Data Breach Notification Rules 

When these personal data breaches occur, organisations’ breach notifications have certain requirements: 

• They must notify the affected EU citizens as well as the supervisory authority of the member state where the data controller has its main establishment. 
• Notice must be given without unnecessary delay and not later than 72 hours after its discovery.   

When notifying the supervisory authority, the controller must propose how the organisation will address the breach, including any mitigation efforts.  

Delphix not only will help anonymise the data to minimize sensitive data in non-production environments, but it will also document the precautions you’ve taken to stay compliant. This will ensure your organisation is audit-ready and able to provide evidence that you’ve conducted due diligence.  

3. Data and Breach Assessment 

I want to note that GDPR provides some exceptions to the additional requirement of notifying the data subjects of the personal data breach.  

Businesses that have “implemented appropriate technical and organisational protection measures that render the data unintelligible to any person who is not authorised to access it” do not need to notify supervisory authorities or effected individuals about their breaches.  

Thus, GDPR-compliant businesses that have used solutions like Delphix to effectively change and disguise their data — whether through GDPR data masking, encryption, or hashing — may benefit from exemptions from notifying regulatory authorities and the individuals affected in a data breach. 

Complying with the breach notification requirements is only a part of the spirit of the regulation. Effectively doing so requires two other steps: 

• Assessing which data an organisation has that is considered to be “personal data.” 
• Understanding if a breach has occurred in the first place.

You can also mitigate breach risk and harm with Delphix, which will protect your data from ransomware, offer breach recovery services, and get your critical services back online if and when breaches occur. 

4. AI Considerations 

There are also unique considerations for GDPR and AI. GDPR Article 22 requires transparency about automated decision-making, which includes AI models trained on personal data. 

Data-driven decision-making is now driving the growth of sensitive data in non-production environments, and I’ve seen some concerning stats on this.  

While the Perforce Delphix State of Data Compliance and Security Report found that 90% of organisations use sensitive data in AI environments, many are uncertain about the compliance implications. Out of the surveyed organisations, 68% expressed concern about privacy audits related to AI. 

Given these considerations and the amount of data kept in non-prod, organisations under GDPR must take extra precautions to ensure sensitive data isn’t at risk due to AI training and other AI-related use cases.  

The best solution: Mask data before it enters non-production environments and AI models. Delphix can anonymise the data while still guaranteeing it’s realistic, consistent across your organisation, and suitable for training and development use cases. Most of all, the data will meet GDPR compliance requirements — as well as those for many other regulations like HIPAA, CCPA, PIPEDA, DORA, and more. 

For more on data privacy regulations >> Data Privacy Laws and Compliance: What You Need to Know to Ensure Compliant Non-Production Data 

What is the Risk of Non-Compliance with the GDPR?  

Non-production environments (including development, testing, analytics, and AI systems) often mirror production environments but typically lack the same security controls.  

Many organisations maintain 7–10 copies of production data, and each copy multiplies your exposure risk under GDPR. When personal data flows into non-prod environments unprotected, it creates significant GDPR compliance risks. 

According to our Perforce Delphix 2025 State of Data Compliance and Security Report, 51% of global enterprise leaders surveyed have GDPR-regulated data in non-production environments, and this has become the biggest concern expressed by the companies I work with.  

Organizations notice this data proliferation and sensitive data sprawl, but according to our 2025 report, 84% still allow compliance exceptions in non-production. This gap between policy and practice is where breaches happen. 

With data breaches in non-production up 11% in 2025, the risk of triggering GDPR penalties has increased significantly. The less severe infringements could result in a fine of up to €10 million, or 2% of the firm’s worldwide annual revenue from the preceding financial year, whichever amount is higher. 

The more serious infringements could result in a fine of up to €20 million, or 4% of the firm’s worldwide annual revenue from the preceding financial year, whichever amount is higher. 

Aside from the potential fines, the GDPR also grants data protection authorities additional powers, including mandatory audit rights, and gives individuals the ability to bring legal claims against non-compliant businesses. 

How are Other Organizations Meeting GDPR Compliance Requirements? 

95% of organisations we surveyed are using static data masking to protect non-production data and ensure regulatory compliance, and 51% of organisations reported having data that is specifically subjected to GDPR. Discover insights from 280 global leaders around sensitive data, compliance, masking, AI, and more. 

Get Data Compliance Insights  

How to Be GDPR Compliant with Delphix 

The key steps to ensuring GDPR compliance are: 

1. Discover the personal data held. Find sensitive data, so you can better manage and protect it. Delphix sensitive data discovery can serve as a GDPR compliance tool, to help identify where personally identifiable information lies in your non-production environments. 
2. Implement controls on how this data is processed. Delphix is a single data platform for all non-prod data, with attribute-based access control providing you with granular security management of your data. 
3. Ensure processing meets data subjects’ rights. This needs to be done in every facet of your organization. Policy management with Delphix allows you to ensure that all data is consistently masked across the organization. 
4. Assure that outsourced processing is compliant. Organizations need to interface with third parties, and Delphix allows you to transfer data anonymously without risk of exposure. 
5. Update and test the processes for managing a data breach to include the new requirements for notification. Delphix provides a standard and predictable workflow for delivering data, which allows you to repeatedly test this across any non-production environment. 
6. Implement data protection by design and default. Delphix enables you to define policies and leverage optional AI models that ensure referential integrity across all your data pipelines. 

GDPR Compliance Success Stories 

Delphix has helped these organisations stay compliant with GDPR and even increase their DevOps productivity: 

Sky Italia 

Sky Italia, a leading European media and entertainment company, faced a tight data privacy compliance deadline when GDPR was first implemented. The organisation needed to reorganize their data centresand separate production data and non-production data, as well as address its test data management inefficiencies. With Delphix’s GDPR compliance solution, Sky Italia:  

• Masked its production data in a way that guarantees referential integrity. 
• Finished non-production data relocation and optimization in three months, to enable better continuity for development and testing activities. 
• Achieved GDPR compliance in five months. 

Read More About Sky Italia 

The University of Manchester 

The University of Manchester desired a technology solution that could help accelerate its software development while addressing the complexity of data collection and sharing under GDPR. The U.K.’s largest single-site university — with more than 40,000 students and 12,800 staff members — had two legacy IT estates and wanted to pursue a digital transformation. 

The University of Manchester needed a technology solution that could accelerate software development, to help it maintain a competitive advantage. By leveraging Delphix as a GDPR compliance solution and using its self-service capabilities, The University of Manchester: 

• Dropped its data refresh times from 16 days to 40 minutes. 
• Eliminated bottlenecks from requesting virtual databases to be provisioned by DBAs. 
• Opened up opportunities for new applications and systems that bring exceptional digital experiences to students and staff. 

Read More About The University of Manchester 

California State University  

California State University also set out to meet compliance requirements for regulations like GDPR. The academic institution— with 23 campuses across the state of California, nearly half a million students, and over 50,000 faculty members — heavily invested in its IT infrastructure by shifting toward digital and transforming its CMS.  

Facing pressures like rigorous security and demand from campuses for greater and faster access to data, California State University’s CMS migration was no easy feat. Delphix data masking technology, integrated data virtualization, and self-service tools:  

• Helped streamline California State’s data extraction from private to public cloud at large volumes and capacity. 
• Automated data delivery for its developer teams using less resources it did before. 
• Saved the academic institution $7.5 million in development storage cost savings per year. 

Read More About California State University 

Support GDPR Compliance with Delphix Data Masking  

Stay ahead of privacy regulations like GDPR with Perforce Delphix. Delphix ensures sensitive data, such as personal identifiers and financial records, is replaced with fictitious but realistic values, safeguarding against breaches while maintaining data integrity. 

In this quick demo, I will show you how easy it is to mask data for GDPR with Delphix:

Related blog >> What is Delphix?

Mask Data for Faster GDPR Compliance   

The Delphix DevOps Data Platform combines data masking with powerful virtualization tools to deliver secure, GDPR-compliant data to testing, development, and analytics environments — without jeopardizing speed or efficiency. Teams can seamlessly access masked, virtual copies of production data within minutes, ensuring compliance at scale. Delphix’s self-service capabilities support innovation at your organization, with data masking that scales. 

Comply with Global Regulations Beyond GDPR 

With Delphix Data Compliance, organisations can enforce centralized masking policies to meet European privacy mandates, such as GDPR and others like CPRA, HIPAA, and PCI DSS. By anonymizing sensitive information across non-production environments, Delphix eliminates the operational risks tied to unsecured data and ensures that compliance doesn’t slow down innovation.

Masking + Virtualization = Faster DevOps 

With masking and virtualization, your organisation can automate compliant test data at enterprise scale and remove productivity barriers. Delphix can transform data compliance workflows and ensure your DevOps team has access to GDPR-compliant data when they need it — in hours, not months or weeks.  

Mask Data for GDPR Demo