Overview

GDPR — General Data Protection Regulation

MAST Consulting Group delivers full GDPR programmes — gap assessment, implementation, internal audit and certification support — for regulated enterprises across the UAE, KSA, India and Africa.

ISO/IEC 27001 Certified
ISO/IEC 27701 Certified
ISO 9001 Certified

Delivered by an ISO/IEC 27001, 27701 & 9001 certified organisation

What is GDPR?

The EU General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation 2016/679) sets the global benchmark for personal data protection, with extra-territorial reach and significant penalties.

Who needs to comply

Controllers and processors established in the EU/EEA
Non-EU organisations offering goods or services to EU residents
Non-EU organisations monitoring the behaviour of EU residents

Why it matters now

Regulators, customers and partners increasingly require evidence of an attested control set.
GDPR provides a defensible baseline that maps cleanly into adjacent frameworks.
A single control set serves multiple audits, reducing cost and audit fatigue.
Boards and audit committees expect quantified, ongoing assurance — not point-in-time reports.

Audit overlap reduction

Less audit fatigue

Clients running GDPR alongside adjacent frameworks typically see a 30–40% reduction in duplicated evidence work.

How MAST helps

Lead Auditor and Lead Implementer-certified consultants for GDPR.
Local delivery in the UAE, KSA and India with on-site and remote options.
Templates, accelerators and a unified control catalogue that map across frameworks.
Managed-service options for continuous compliance after certification.

Why MAST for GDPR

Lead Auditor and Lead Implementer-certified consultants for GDPR.
Local delivery in the UAE, KSA and India with on-site and remote options.
Templates, accelerators and a unified control catalogue that map across frameworks.
Managed-service options for continuous compliance after certification.

Scope & boundaries

Defining the right scope is the single biggest determinant of GDPR success. Too narrow and the certificate is meaningless to buyers; too broad and the programme stalls under its own weight. The boundary below is our starting point and is tuned to each client during a two-week scoping sprint.

Legal entities, business units and brands in scope
Geographies, data residency boundaries and cross-border flows
Cloud accounts, on-premise estates and end-user computing devices
In-scope products, services or customer segments — and the data they process
Third parties and sub-processors handling in-scope data on your behalf
Shared services (identity, HR, payroll, finance) that touch the in-scope estate

Key controls & requirements

GDPR is structured around the control families below. MAST maintains a unified control catalogue that maps each requirement to your existing controls, so one implementation satisfies multiple audits.

Lawful basis and purpose limitation
Data subject rights
Security of processing and breach notification
International data transfers
Records of processing and accountability
Data protection impact assessments

Compliance steps

A pragmatic 12 to 16 week roadmap from gap to audit-ready GDPR. Compresses for smaller scopes and extends for multi-entity programmes; every stage ends with a formal gate review.

Stage	Duration	Outcome
1. Mobilise	Week 1	Sponsor confirmed, charter signed, scope statement agreed
2. Gap assess	Weeks 2–3	Current-state maturity heatmap and prioritised remediation backlog
3. Design	Weeks 4–6	Policies, control matrix, risk treatment plan, Statement of Applicability
4. Implement	Weeks 6–12	Controls live, evidence captured, workforce trained, internal awareness done
5. Internal audit	Weeks 12–14	Independent audit report, findings closed, management review minuted
6. External audit	Weeks 14–16	Stage 1 readiness review and Stage 2 / certification audit for GDPR
7. Sustain	Ongoing	Surveillance audits, continuous monitoring and annual management review

Common pitfalls — and how we avoid them

The failure patterns we see most often on GDPR programmes. None are about the standard itself — they are about how it is run.

Lawful basis selected as 'legitimate interests' without a documented Legitimate Interests Assessment.
International transfer relying on SCCs without a Transfer Impact Assessment — invalid post-Schrems II.
Records of Processing (Article 30) maintained as a spreadsheet that diverges from the production reality within a quarter.
Breach clock started when IT confirmed the incident, not when the organisation first became aware — risks missing the 72-hour window.
Data subject request workflow treated as a manual legal task, then breaches the one-month statutory deadline at volume.
Processor contracts missing the Article 28 mandatory clauses — every onward sub-processor inherits the gap.

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