This article is based on a case study originally reported by devops.com, drawing on interviews with Cybric’s chief innovation officer, Mike D. Kail, in May 2018, shortly before GDPR enforcement began on 25 May 2018.
The GDPR Challenge for Most Enterprises
When the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) approached its enforcement date in May 2018, a significant portion of enterprises were still scrambling to understand their obligations, let alone meet them. The regulation introduced strict requirements around how personal data belonging to EU residents is collected, stored, processed, and deleted—along with substantial fines for non-compliance.
Against this backdrop, Cybric—a security platform provider with fewer than 20 full-time employees at the time—stood out by claiming to have been GDPR-ready well before the deadline. Their chief innovation officer, Mike D. Kail, attributed that readiness directly to the DevOps culture and practices the company had already embedded into its operations.
Why DevOps and GDPR Are a Natural Fit
At its core, GDPR compliance is a data-governance problem: organizations must know what personal data they hold, where it came from, where it flows, and how long it is retained. These are exactly the kinds of concerns that well-implemented DevOps practices already address.
Kail summarized the connection clearly:
“One core part of the culture of DevOps is about collaboration, sharing and communications and making sure you have automated processes in place. That is, in part, how we were able to do what had to be done for GDPR.”
Mike D. Kail, Chief Innovation Officer, Cybric
The three DevOps principles that most directly enabled Cybric’s compliance were:
- Automation: Replacing error-prone manual data-handling steps with repeatable, auditable automated workflows.
- Transparency: Maintaining clear, up-to-date records of data sources, processing steps, and the geographic location of data subjects.
- Cross-functional collaboration: Ensuring that infrastructure, development, and business teams shared ownership of data-flow decisions rather than siloing responsibility in a single compliance team.
Standard Procedure: Building Compliance Into Daily Operations
Cybric’s advantage was that many GDPR-relevant practices were already in place before the regulation was even announced. The company kept transparent records of its data sources and the corresponding geographic locations of individuals in its databases, and was continuously evaluating how to automate data-flow handling.
According to Kail, this proactive stance meant the company was analyzing how it processed data and tracking where it was going long before GDPR compliance became an external requirement. When GDPR appeared on Cybric’s radar more than a year before enforcement began, the compliance work was largely a matter of formalizing and documenting processes that were already in motion.
Kail contrasted this with the alternative approach many organizations take:
“The wrong way consists of manual, out-of-bound efforts for processes and tasks that people ultimately screw up or forget to do on a regular basis. And when that happens, you now have potential compliance issues.”
Mike D. Kail, Chief Innovation Officer, Cybric
The lesson here is straightforward: automation reduces compliance risk not just by increasing speed, but by eliminating the human-error surface area that manual processes inevitably create.
Shared Ownership Across All Teams
A recurring theme in Cybric’s approach was that GDPR compliance was treated as everyone’s responsibility, not a task delegated exclusively to a legal or security team. Infrastructure engineers, developers, and business stakeholders each understood how their work intersected with data flows and, by extension, with regulatory obligations.
Kail explained the cultural dynamic:
“Each team figures out how they can help, which goes back to the collaborative culture of DevOps. It’s everybody’s responsibility and not just one team’s concern in the company. In the case of GDPR, the fines and levies can be significant, so everybody should take this seriously and not put it off.”
Mike D. Kail, Chief Innovation Officer, Cybric
For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), this model is especially practical. With a compact team, cross-functional alignment is easier to achieve than in a large enterprise where organizational silos and competing priorities can delay compliance efforts for months.
GDPR’s Long Arm: Don’t Assume You’re Out of Scope
One of the most common misconceptions about GDPR at the time was that it only applied to companies that directly store large volumes of EU customer data. In reality, GDPR’s scope is considerably broader. Any organization that processes the personal data of EU residents—regardless of whether that organization is based inside the EU—falls under the regulation.
This means GDPR applies to data collected from:
- Website visitors from EU member states who submit contact forms or download gated marketing content.
- EU-based sales prospects in a CRM system.
- EU-based vendor or partner contacts in any business system.
- EU employees or contractors in HR systems.
Cybric itself is an illustrative example. Even though the company outsourced its customers’ personal data processing, it was still required to comply with GDPR because EU residents could visit its website and submit personal information to download marketing materials.
Kail specifically flagged marketing as an area where many organizations underestimate their exposure:
“I think marketing is an area that a lot of people don’t think about too much. They are like, ‘I don’t have any personal data directly,’ but indirectly, they do have personal data and must be GDPR-compliant.”
Mike D. Kail, Chief Innovation Officer, Cybric
Lessons for SMEs: Size Is an Advantage, Not a Barrier
A common anxiety among smaller organizations is that GDPR compliance requires the same level of investment in legal counsel, tooling, and dedicated personnel as a large enterprise. Cybric’s experience pushes back against that assumption.
With fewer than 20 full-time employees, Cybric found that its small size actually made compliance easier. Fewer people means fewer silos, shorter communication loops, and faster iteration when processes need to change. The collaborative practices already embedded in DevOps workflows translated directly into an organization that could identify, discuss, and resolve compliance gaps quickly.
Kail’s advice for smaller organizations:
“As a small company, putting together a collaborative process with all of the different departments made it much easier for us. That is also the approach people have to take.”
Mike D. Kail, Chief Innovation Officer, Cybric
Key Takeaways for DevOps Teams
Cybric’s story offers practical principles that any engineering-led organization can apply to compliance challenges—GDPR or otherwise:
- Map your data flows early and continuously. Know what personal data you collect, where it goes, and who can access it. Treat this as a living artifact, not a one-time audit deliverable.
- Automate data-handling processes. Manual steps are compliance liabilities. Wherever possible, encode data retention, access controls, and deletion workflows into automated pipelines.
- Make compliance a cross-functional concern. Engineering, marketing, sales, and legal all touch personal data in different ways. Compliance cannot be owned by a single team in isolation.
- Don’t assume you are out of scope. If your product or website is accessible to EU residents, audit every data-capture touchpoint—forms, analytics, marketing automation, and third-party integrations.
- Start now, even if you don’t have full clarity. Waiting for perfect understanding of the regulation before acting is a common and costly mistake. Incremental progress toward compliance is better than inaction.
While GDPR is now several years into enforcement and most organizations have addressed the initial compliance wave, the underlying challenge—knowing where personal data lives and ensuring it is handled responsibly—remains ongoing. For teams that have embedded DevOps principles into their engineering culture, that challenge is considerably more manageable.