Securing the Rights of Data Subjects with Blockchain Technology

The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been effective for more than a year. Even though several million euros have been spent on GDPR projects, companies are insecure about being fully compliant. The status quo is that companies lack processes and infrastructure for several legal responsibilities regarding rights of data subjects. This leads to manual effort and long waiting times for users. Data protection authorities receive complaints about these waiting times, but affected people cannot legally submit a proof for request initiation since these requests are usually done via the companies' platforms or email. This paper presents a technical solution to this problem by installing a blockchain-based application to submit and track requests for data access securely whilst preserving data protection for the subjects to be able to file complaints and ultimately ensure the given data protection rights.