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Melissa Enhances DataDelta’s “GDPR Right to Erasure Risk Audit” to Address Greatest Risk and Challenge of GDPR

Sophisticated Match Algorithm Better Defines Gaps in MDM Operations, Essential in Avoiding Massive GDPR Penalties



Rancho Santa Margarita, CALIF – December 4, 2017 Melissa , a leading provider of global contact data quality and identity verification solutions, today announced an alliance with DataDelta, a 13-year leader in Master Data Management (MDM) match accuracy analytics, supporting enterprises globally with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance. DataDelta’s “GDPR Right to Erasure Risk Audit,” powered by Melissa, provides the first comprehensive analytics for what surveys have shown to be the greatest challenge and risk of GDPR compliance failures – Article 17’s right to erasure.


“MDM success has actually created a perfect storm of GRPR risk due to C-level complacency and lack of awareness,” said Ed Allburn, founding president and CEO of DataDelta. “After spending often over $10 million creating 360-degree, single customer view golden records in these MDM customer hubs, it’s natural to assume that right of erasure and other subject access requests would be reliably executed. That is an incorrect assumption and potentially devastating in terms of costs, due to GDPR’s massive fine schedule.”


“The root cause of this surprising risk is that, due to match industry best practices, customer hubs intentionally err heavily on the side of false-negative match errors. That is, when customer records have data quality issues such as misspelled names, low confidence matches are blocked even when they may be correct,” Allburn explained. “And you cannot erase what you cannot find, which will be a costly compliance failure under GDPR.””


DataDelta’s GDPR Right to Erasure Risk Audit generates key metrics that quantify an organization’s degree of risk. In contrast to traditional, unreliable sampling techniques, DataDelta uniquely analyzes entire customer hubs, even those over one billion records in size. The resulting top-down, holistic view enables DataDelta to then connect the dots, identifying systemic problem trends along with prioritized impact analysis. “These analytics also provide the framework for implementing a reliable GDPR right to erasure solution. Melissa’s specialized EU match technology further addresses the unique challenges of EU data,” Allburn concluded.

“The 360-degree customer view enabled by modern CRM and MDM platforms creates an overall advantage, yet falls short of GDPR requirements. By partnering with DataDelta, we’re enabling the smart internal risk audits that are essential in uncovering data problems an enterprise may have assumed were solved. It’s a powerful extension of our focus on active data quality, helping enterprises meet a new level of data accountability,” said Bud Walker, vice president, enterprise sales and strategy, Melissa.

For greater insight, join Melissa and DataDelta for a live Q&A which repeats daily through December 23 in several time zones. Register here for next week’s event, slated for Wednesday, December 6 at 2:00 P.M. Eastern, or register here for the UK-based series. To connect with members of Melissa’s global intelligence team outside of our upcoming industry events, visit www.melissa.com or call 1-800-MELISSA.

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