Despite seemingly constant reports of data breaches, a new study has found the introduction of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation has resulted in a reduction in data being both exposed and stolen from companies that are GDPR-compliant.

The claim comes from Cisco Systems Inc.’s new Data Privacy Benchmark Study based on data from 3,200 security professionals worldwide. The study, released Thursday, found that nearly 60 percent of organizations have now met most or all GDPR requirements, with nearly 30 percent more expected to do so within a year.

GDPR, which went into effect in May, sets privacy regulations for both companies located in the European Union and those with a presence via the internet. The regulations impose strict rules on personally identifiable information, with strict penalties for companies that fail to comply.

To comply with GDPR, companies have been forced to improve security procedures and hence those that have done so are now less likely to suffer a data breach.

Nearly three-quarters percent of companies described as being the most GDPR-ready suffered fewer data breaches in the last year than organizations that have not or are only in the process of being GDPR compliant. Some 80 percent of GDPR-compliant companies said they had been hit with a data breach since May versus nearly 90 percent that were not compliant.

Those attacks that do occur against GDRP-complaint companies are also smaller, with an average of 79,000 files exposed versus 212,000 for noncompliant companies. Only 37 percent of GDPR-compliant companies had a data breach-related loss of over $500,000 last year versus 64 percent for noncompliant companies.

“These results highlight that privacy investment has created business value far beyond compliance and has become an important competitive advantage for many companies,” Cisco said in the study. “Organizations should, therefore, work to understand the implications of their privacy investments, including reducing delays in their sales cycle and lowering the risk and costs associated with data breaches as well as other potential benefits like agility/innovation, competitive advantage and operational efficiency.”

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