1. Taking into account the state of the art, the cost of implementation and the nature, scope, context and purposes of processing as well as the risks of varying likelihood and severity for rights and freedoms of natural persons posed by the processing, the controller shall, both at the time of the determination of the means for processing and at the time of the processing itself, implement appropriate technical and organisational measures, such as pseudonymisation, which are designed to implement data-protection principles, such as data minimisation, in an effective manner and to integrate the necessary safeguards into the processing in order to meet the requirements of this Regulation and protect the rights of data subjects.
Article 25 GDPR - Data protection by design and by default
2. The controller shall implement appropriate technical and organisational measures for ensuring that, by default, only personal data which are necessary for each specific purpose of the processing are processed. That obligation applies to the amount of personal data collected, the extent of their processing, the period of their storage and their accessibility. In particular, such measures shall ensure that by default personal data are not made accessible without the individual’s intervention to an indefinite number of natural persons.
3. An approved certification mechanism pursuant to Article 42 may be used as an element to demonstrate compliance with the requirements set out in paragraphs 1 and 2 of this Article.
Relevant Recitals
Frequently Asked Questions
Short answers to common questions about this provision. They are general information and not legal advice.
Article 25(1) obliges the controller to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures, such as pseudonymisation, designed to give effect to data-protection principles like data minimisation and to integrate the necessary safeguards into the processing. The obligation applies both when the means of processing are determined and during the processing itself, so compliance must be built in from the planning stage rather than added afterwards.
The controller must take into account the state of the art, the cost of implementation, the nature, scope, context and purposes of the processing, and the risks of varying likelihood and severity for the rights and freedoms of natural persons. The obligation is therefore risk-based and context-dependent, and a small-scale, low-risk operation is not held to the same standard as a large-scale, intrusive one.
Under Article 25(2), the default settings of a system must ensure that only personal data necessary for each specific purpose are processed. The provision states that this covers the amount of data collected, the extent of the processing, the storage period and the accessibility of the data, and it specifically requires that data are not made accessible to an indefinite number of persons without the individual's intervention.
No, the obligation in Article 25 is addressed to the controller alone. Recital 78 nonetheless encourages producers of products, services and applications to take account of data protection when developing them, which in practice influences controllers because they can only select tools that allow them to comply.
Paragraph 3 provides that an approved certification mechanism pursuant to Article 42 may be used as an element to demonstrate compliance with paragraphs 1 and 2. Certification is evidentiary rather than conclusive, and it operates alongside the general accountability duty of Article 5(2) and Article 24 to be able to demonstrate compliance.