Photo: Jason Doiy/ALM

A day after Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's grilling on privacy from members of the European Parliament in Brussels, the social network has announced that it has filled a position that could be integral to the company's data privacy practices in the EU and beyond.

Stephen Deadman, who is currently the company's global deputy chief privacy officer, will step in as Facebook's data protection officer starting on Friday. He'll also be DPO for Facebook-owned Instagram and WhatsApp.

Stephen Deadman. Courtesy photo.

Companies like Facebook are required to have a data protection officer under the EU's General Data Protection Regulation, which goes into effect Friday. The GDPR is a wide-ranging new set of rules that companies processing EU citizens' data must follow, or else face massive fines.

The DPO's role is to ensure GDPR compliance for companies processing data inside the EU and to serve as a point of contact for data protection officials.

Facebook said in a statement that London-based Deadman will also lead a team responsible for responding to users' questions about their data. This team will include members from Ireland, home to Facebook's European headquarters, and other EU countries.

Deadman has served as the Menlo Park, California-based company's global deputy chief privacy officer since January 2015, leading the implementation of Facebook's privacy policy internationally.

Prior to joining Facebook, Deadman spent more than a decade with Vodafone Group. He served as group privacy officer and head of legal, privacy, security and content standards at Vodafone from 2009 to 2014 and established the company's global privacy program.

“I'm delighted that Stephen will be Facebook's first data protection officer. He's been a strong advocate for protecting people's privacy and improving how Facebook and other companies design for privacy,” Erin Egan, Facebook's chief privacy officer, said in a statement. “This is one of the most important steps in our compliance with the GDPR, and Stephen will ably represent the interests of people who use Facebook across the EU.”

As Deadman takes on the DPO job, Facebook's current director of privacy for Latin America, Laura Juanes Micas, will take the lead on the company's privacy policy internationally. Micas joined Facebook in January 2017 and previously served as assistant general counsel, privacy and human rights, at Yahoo.