Slack's GDPR Commitment
Our Commitment to You and the Protection of Your Data
We’re committed to helping Slack customers and users understand, and where applicable, comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR is the most comprehensive EU data privacy law in decades, and went into effect on May 25, 2018.
Besides strengthening and standardizing user data privacy across the EU nations, it introduces new or additional obligations on all organizations that handle EU citizens’ personal data, regardless of where the organizations are located. On this page, we explain how we help our customers comply with the GDPR.
- GDPR Compliance
- Security Infrastructure Standards and Certifications
- International Data Transfers
- Updates
GDPR Compliance
The GDPR’s updated requirements are significant and our global team has adapted Slack’s product offerings, operations and contractual commitments to help customers comply with the regulation. Measures we have implemented include:
- Investments in our security infrastructure and certifications
- Updates to relevant contractual terms
- Support for international data transfers by maintaining our Privacy Shield self-certifications, and by executing Standard Contractual Clauses through our updated Data Processing Addendum
- Offering data portability and data management tools including:
- Import and export tools. Businesses and organizations may access, import, and export their Customer Data using Slack’s tools.
- Profile deletion tool. Help customers respond to user requests to delete personal information, such as names and email addresses, from a Slack account.
- Workspace settings center. See your workspace’s plan and settings, or contact an admin who controls the workspace.
We also monitor the guidance around GDPR compliance from privacy-related regulatory bodies, and update our product features and contractual commitments accordingly. We’ll provide you with regular updates so that you’re always current.
Our Security Infrastructure and Certifications
Protecting our customers’ information and their users’ privacy is extremely important to us. As a cloud-based company entrusted with some of our customers’ most valuable data, we’ve set high standards for security. We’ve received several security certifications from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants such as SOC 2 and SOC 3. Slack has received internationally recognized security certifications for ISO 27001 (information security management system), ISO 27017 (security controls for the provision and use of cloud services) and ISO 27018 (for protecting personal data in the cloud).
Slack has invested heavily in building a robust security team, one that can handle a variety of issues — everything from threat detection to building new tools. In accordance with GDPR requirements around security incident notifications, Slack will continue to meet its obligations and offer contractual assurances.
If you’d like to learn more about Slack’s security policies and procedures, please see our security page. It provides detailed information on how we approach security, and includes a white paper on how Slack ensures user data security in particular.
International Data Transfers: Privacy Shield and Contractual Terms
To comply with E.U. data protection laws around international data transfer mechanisms, we self-certify under the E.U.-U.S. Privacy Shield and the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield. These frameworks were developed to establish a way for companies to comply with data protection requirements when transferring personal data from the European Union and Switzerland to the United States.
In addition, we offer European Union Model Clauses, also known as Standard Contractual Clauses, to meet adequacy and security requirements for our customers who operate in the E.U.
Updates
Fulfilling our privacy and data security commitments is important to us. So we’re glad to comply and help you comply with the GDPR. If you have any questions about your rights under the GDPR as a User or how Slack can help you with compliance as a Customer, we hope you’ll reach out to us at privacy@slack.com