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With the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) set to go into effect Friday, organizations are bracing themselves for the potential wave of requests from European Union residents looking to exercise their “right to erasure” under the regulation. While the regulation allows individuals to request that their data be returned to them or erased, most company data storage systems weren't exactly designed with GDPR's new mandates in mind.

Professional services group BDO USA and IntraEdge Technology this week launched a platform, GDPR Edge, to allow companies to centralize transactional data and manage subject access requests. GDPR Edge, powered by Intel Software Guard Extensions' blockchain infrastructure, is aimed at large companies with consumer-facing services.

BDO national data and information governance practice leader Karen Schuler said clients were routinely asking for assistance “to implement solutions for data subject arrays, access requests, getting data out of [enterprise resource planning] systems,” something organizations will now have to do under the GDPR's mandates.

GDPR Edge uses blockchain to keep a running ledger of subject access requests to companies, making it possible to create audit trails around what information consumers want back.

The product, borne of conversations between BDO, IntraEdge and Intel that began several months prior, is an attempt to help create a scalable way for organizations to both manage their data return obligations and create new data about these subject access requests. “It allows us to audit and firm up the processes around subject access requests, and gives us the metrics we didn't have previously,” Schuler told Legaltech News.

“Subject access rights are probably going to be one of the most compelling reasons for a supervisory authority to come after you,” Schuler said of the new regulation. The demand, according to a recent study from cloud data management company Veritas Technologies, is likely to be substantial—nearly 40 percent of U.K. consumers plan to take advantage of GDPR's “right to be forgotten” policy within six months of the regulation's May 25 compliance date.

“It really started with subject access rights and what we could do around that,” Schuler said of the new product launch. “That's where we think we could have a huge opportunity in the market.”

That kind of demand leaves fairly little room for mistakes. “We thought by implementing something that could be more methodical for clients, there would be less source of error,” Schuler said of the tool.

Ultimately, Schuler hopes that the tool can help organizations move beyond basic GDPR compliance and toward more structured processes for consumers to retrieve data. “It's more than compliance. It's a new way to engage with your customers and the power of the data you have,” she said.