GDPR Compliance in Software Development: A Technical Guide

GDPR compliance is not a legal checkbox exercise — it is an engineering discipline that must be embedded in software architecture from the first design decision. Article 25 requires data protection "by design and by default," meaning the technical measures that protect personal data must be integral to the system, not bolted on after development.

In practice, this means every enterprise application handling personal data must implement data minimisation (collect only what is necessary), purpose limitation (use data only for stated purposes), storage limitation (enforce retention policies automatically), integrity and confidentiality (encryption, access controls), and accountability (audit logging, processing records). For systems handling health data or financial data, additional Article 9 protections for special category data apply.

redskios implements these principles as standard across our security and compliance practice: field-level encryption for sensitive data, granular role-based access with audit logging, automated data retention enforcement, consent management with withdrawal capability, data portability APIs, and right-to-erasure workflows that cascade across related systems. These are not add-ons — they are baseline requirements for any system processing personal data of EU residents.