Data Guardian

As A Technology Services Company That Provides Visa Processing And Passport Issuance Related Services, Vfs Global Handles Over 21 Million Visa Applications Per Year Across 144 Countries. Group Data Protection Officer Barry Cook Speaks To Security Advisor Me About Managing Sensitive Data And Being Gdpr-compliant.

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What does your role as the Privacy and Data Protection Officer at VFS Global entail?

My role is primarily focused on compliance. I am responsible for ensuring that the VFS Global Group is adhering to all the necessary data protection legislations across all the 144 countries it operates in. In addition, I have a secondary role, which is to act as an advisor to various business units within the VFS Global Group on how they can operate within the boundaries of the different legislations. This also extends to our product development team, where I make sure that all our offerings are compliant and fully operational right from the beginning.

Ensuring that VFS is compliant to all the data protection laws and regulations in over 140 countries must be a daunting task. What kind of strategy have you put in place to ensure that you don’t have any gaps?