GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation and is the new European Union regulation designed to replace the Data Protection Directive (DPD) and the UK Data Protection Act 1998.
After many years of debate, it was approved by the EU Parliament on April 14th, 2016. The regulation focuses on:
Protecting personal data
Safeguarding the rights of individuals regarding their data
Its primary aim is to ease the flow of personal data across the 28 EU member states, creating a unified data protection framework.