Data sharing and overseas transfers

Our services

Multiple overlapping legal requirements apply when sharing personal data and transferring it outside the EU and UK. We can help you define your data sharing strategy and navigate the various data protection regulatory requirements, mitigating the threat of fines, reputational damage and risk of non-compliance while enabling your business to operate effectively.

Our data sharing and overseas transfer services are based on the principle of facilitating the ethical sharing of personal data in compliance with data protection legislation while ensuring that business operations are uninterrupted.

Overseas transfers and data sharing strategies

We have extensive experience advising organisations, from start-ups to global corporations, on their overseas transfers and data sharing strategies for the distribution of personal data within group entities and externally with a third party. As part of this service, we will meet with your teams to assess your data sharing practice and map out your compliance risks. We will then identify how these can be mitigated and assist you with implementing compliant solutions. We partner with you to ensure that any strategies put in place are effective and enable the business to continue to operate without too much red tape.

Third-party data protection due diligence

We have a suite of third-party data protection due diligence documentation to ensure you comply with data protection legislation when sharing personal data within your group entity or externally. We provide access to these documents and help embed and operationalise them within your organisation, ensuring that the right questions are asked in the early stage of data sharing to prevent delays further down the line.

Reviewing, drafting, and negotiating data sharing agreements

Under data protection legislation, a vast number of requirements must be met to ensure that the sharing of any personal data is compliant. We review, draft, and assist with negotiating data sharing agreements to ensure these compliance requirements are met.

We can help you review your current agreements and perform a gap analysis to identify areas that need to be remediated. We can carry out bespoke reviews of individual data sharing agreements or set up and run remediation projects to review and update all your data sharing agreements in one go.

Transfer impact assessments and data protection impact assessments

When transferring personal data to countries not recognised by the UK/EU as having adequate data protection laws, you are required to carry out a transfer impact assessment to ensure that the recipient of the data will be able to comply with the adequacy mechanism in place. For example, can they meet the relevant data protection requirements or comply with the text of the Standard Contractual Clauses?

We can help you prepare transfer impact assessments and associated data protection impact assessments. These will appraise the risk of any overseas transfers, the current controls in place and the operational measures required to ensure that any data sharing outside of the UK/EU remains compliant.

Binding corporate rules

Binding corporate rules provide a mechanism to enable overseas data transfers within a corporate group without requiring additional documentation for each transfer.

We work with you to identify whether binding corporate rules are the right solution for your organisation. If so, we can help you choose the most appropriate lead supervisory authority for your binding corporate rules based on your establishment and assist with preparing the correct documentation for your group entities.

In doing so, we will review current data sharing activity across your group, identify solutions for you to streamline any processes, and assist with updating policies and procedures. We will also liaise with the lead supervisory authorities in the relevant member states to enable your binding corporate rules to be approved under data protection legislation.

Data sharing policies and procedures

We all know compliance can sometimes be seen as a tick-box exercise; however, we have practical hands-on experience working in-house with organisations to bring policies and procedures to life.

We have a suite of data sharing policies, procedures, and template documents which can be tailored to address and document your data sharing arrangements and assist with demonstrating that you are sharing personal data in a compliant way. Not only will the policy and procedures give you peace of mind, but you can also use them to demonstrate compliance to any third parties with whom you share data.

You might also be interested in these services:

Training and mentoring

Improving your organisation’s understanding of the data protection environment.

Read more

Privacy management programmes and frameworks

Finding your data protection bearings so you can move forward with confidence.

Read more

Compliance audit and remediation

Exploring your data protection landscape and mapping any uncharted areas.

Read more

How sure are you that your data sharing and overseas transfer activities are compliant?