• by Ray Schultz , May 15, 2018

Salesforce, a CRM platform provider, has named Lindsey Finch as its data protection officer in preparation for the arrival of the General Digital Protection Regulation on May 25. She already holds the title of senior vice president of global privacy and product legal.

Finch, a privacy lawyer, has worked at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Homeland Security and General Electric.

In a Q&A posted by Salesforce, she says her appointment as DPO is “a natural outgrowth of our existing program.”

She notes that she has led “Salesforce’s global privacy program for the last ten and a half years, and I’ve also led the Company’s product legal team for the past 4 years.”

She adds: “My team’s role has always encompassed ensuring Salesforce complies with privacy laws and helping enable our customers’ compliance in using our services.”

Salesforce welcomes the GDPR, the company says.

“The GDPR is an incredibly rich document — 99 articles and 173 recitals across 88 pages! Our Privacy team broke this down into key principles and worked closely with our Technology & Products organization to review our compliance. We found that we were already in a great place.”

In a separate development, Salesforce has opened an “Innovation Centre” at its London office, following the opening of a similar one in San Francisco last month, according to media reports. The objective is to help firms grow their digital businesses.