Data Privacy in Practice: A Hands-On Guide to GDPR (Europe) and PDPL (Saudi Arabia) Compliance

Two privacy laws. One compliance headache. One book that actually solves it.

If your organisation touches customer or employee data in both Europe and Saudi Arabia, you already know the problem: the GDPR and the Saudi PDPL are both serious, well-enforced laws — and almost nothing published treats them as one operational problem. You end up stitching together EU legal commentary, Saudi vendor blog posts, and guesswork.

Data Privacy in Practice is a 209-page, hands-on guide built specifically to close that gap. It's not a legal textbook. It's the book you hand a colleague who needs to stand up a real compliance programme this quarter — not next year.

WHAT'S INSIDE (41 chapters across six parts)

A complete GDPR deep dive — principles, lawful bases, special category data, the 8 data subject rights and their real-world limits, DPIAs, breach response, and a step-by-step compliance roadmap

A complete Saudi PDPL deep dive — SDAIA's requirements, the National Data Governance Platform, consent-centric obligations, cross-border transfer rules (including the exact safeguard mechanisms currently required), and how PDPL actually differs from GDPR in practice

A unified compliance framework for running one programme that satisfies both regimes at once, instead of maintaining two disconnected ones

Advanced chapters on AI governance and the EU AI Act, sector-specific guidance (finance, healthcare, HR, e-commerce), a comparative look across the wider Gulf Cooperation Council (UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman), global context (UK GDPR, CCPA, PIPL), cloud and SaaS security, privacy programme metrics, vendor supply-chain risk, and building a career in privacy

Dozens of ready-to-use templates, including a Record of Processing Activities, a DPIA (with a fully worked example), a full Data Processing Agreement, a Data Breach Response Plan with a complete tabletop exercise script, a DSAR response letter, vendor due diligence tools, a cookie policy, a data retention schedule, an employee monitoring policy, board reporting dashboards, and a privacy programme maturity self-assessment

A full glossary, index, list of figures, and regulatory contacts directory for fast reference

WHO THIS IS FOR

Founders and operations leads who need to stand up a privacy programme without a legal department. Compliance officers and DPOs expanding from one region into the other. Consultants who want a structured framework and reusable templates for client work. Legal and IT professionals who need a working understanding of both laws, fast.

WHAT MAKES IT DIFFERENT

Most GDPR books stop at explaining the law. Most PDPL content is scattered across vendor marketing pages, not a structured resource. This book was built to be used, not just read — every template is designed to be adapted directly into your own compliance files.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rashid Hussain is a legal and technology governance professional with more than fifteen years of senior in-house experience at the intersection of corporate and technology law, cybersecurity, data privacy, regulatory compliance, and business risk at a leading IT services company in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He is the author of several publications in international journals and has also authored multiple published books. He holds an MBA, an MA, and an LLB, and recently completed an MSc in Information Security and Digital Forensics from the University of East London.

Format: PDF, 209 pages, instant digital download.