What is the best way to evaluate your data privacy?

A data inventory is the foundation to a privacy program. The first step is to #knowthedata which involves understanding both the business processes & the systems where data is collected, used, shared and stored. Just knowing where data is stored is not enough from a privacy perspective. Privacy laws require a business purpose as well. A data inventory should be a fluid document and changes as the business evolves. Data inventory maps provide a visual flow and the details can be documented in a spreadsheet or in a software solution.

Evaluating data privacy starts effectively with a thorough assessment of your data inventory. Identifying the types of personal data you handle, their storage locations, collection methods, and access privileges is crucial. This step helps create a GDPR Article 30 compliant Record of Processing Activities. By utilizing tools like data mapping and flow diagrams, organizations not only visualize data flows but also ensure GDPR compliance. This process helps in pinpointing areas of potential risk and in strategizing to mitigate these risks, thereby enhancing data protection measures. Remember, under GDPR, understanding and documenting your data inventory is not just a best practice, it's a requirement for compliance.

Agreed, but sometimes companies can be big and complex enough so regional legal differences might apply to same datasets. Take that into account.

To monitor and assess the effectiveness of your data architecture and data privacy framework, you should utilize a variety of metrics and indicators: such as compliance rates security incidents user feedback commercial value.

Data privacy lies in not publishing or declaring it in any unsafe place. We must, in general, be careful in publishing our information and data, because we are in the age of piracy, and we cannot trust unknown sources. Therefore, we must be very careful in publishing our data. At the same time, we need to disseminate our experiences and benefit from them. Therefore, there are several ways to be at the forefront and publish our data, but within established, guaranteed and known laws.

If you are in big and complex companies you might want to adopt the most strict standards to every region/country. Like German for example.

If you are an MNC and have multiple websites or products, you may want to consider different data privacy notices or layered approach. Transparency obligations are not a check box exercises. Companies should be transparent about how they are processing personal data. It would not work if you try to copy another companies policy template.

Data inventories can help companies understand how data is used and under which business purpose or legal basis. They can also identify when data is shared or sold to a company which will help a company with its compliance of disclosing a sale under various US state laws such as CCPA. Data inventories should list security measures. There should be a policy in place that discusses how often the data inventory should be updated, what would a trigger an update, and who should be responsible as well as which privacy laws the company must comply with.

I highly recommend having a pre-dpia decision chart or dpia necessity questionnaire. It can save you time and evaluate real privacy impact of new projects.

You should use various metrics and indicators to track and measure the performance of the data privacy framework and your data architecture, such as compliance rates, security incidents, user feedback, or business value.

This is very exhausting and might waste energy at the beginning. You better make sure to cover every time new data is being requested to be used, and assessing before any data is approved or shared. And in parallel make sure to cover your integrations between systems, specially ERPs, in first place.

A data inventory will highlight when sensitive data is processed or a business activity could increase the risk of harm to an individual, a new technology is to be used, automated decision making or other similar situations. A data privacy impact assessment (DPIA) or privacy impact assessment (PIA) which have a few nuances depending on the law should be completed under these circumstances. When new projects are kicking off, sometimes it is a good idea to complete a privacy threshold assessment which can determine if a DPIA/PIA is required. A PIA captures the risks in a process and the mitigation efforts in place to lower the risk to the individual.

Data privacy is the branch of data protection that deals with handling personal data in compliance with data protection laws, regulations, and general privacy best practices One of the best ways to evaluate your data privacy is to perform a data protection impact assessment (DPIA), which is sometimes called a privacy impact assessment (PIA) A DPIA is a process that helps organizations to analyze and assess privacy risks for individuals arising from the processing of their data There are many benefits of conducting DPIAs, such as lower likelihood of data breaches, reduced risk of failing to meet legal obligations, less risk of hefty expenses for data breach recovery, fines, lawsuits, and lost business.

When a new project or initiative is launching, privacy should be considered and all features that are privacy forward should be on by default. Considering the risk of harm to the individual, what an individual would want to know (transparency) should be disclosed in the privacy notice, and the ability for an individual to access, delete, or opt-out of processing is important to consider while designing the process. Implementing strong security measures that are appropriate to the data being collected is essential to maintaining a privacy by default approach.

Privacy is a team sport and everyone in the organization should understand their role. Whether its processing data in a new way, selecting a new vendor, managing security measures, launching a new marketing campaign, asking for sensitive information, companies need to embed privacy into the daily functions of the organization. Training people about the risks and important of privacy will allow it to become second nature just like how much something costs, who will manage it, is there a contract in place when needed.

Training of teams is a crucial step for GDPR compliance and ensuring data privacy. Where possible, we train teams based on real world scenarios relevant to them, and based on our findings in an assessment process. This ensures relevance and increases retention of the information, and provides the participants context on data processing and risks that they will come across.

Someways to get started: - Having Data Privacy Officer - Personalized Data privacy adviser especially for application development team - Having at least one Data Privacy ambassador as our team member - Initiating data privacy activities, scheduling meetings with above stakeholders These create environment to discuss the importance of Data privacy initiatives, providing processes, tools, local laws (like GDPR, WPA, CCPA, DPA etc.,) to teams, making them understand necessary requirements to follow both internally and externally.

Ensure data privacy by implementing continuous monitoring and audits. Regular assessments identify strengths, vulnerabilities, and deviations, ensuring compliance and swift corrective actions. Proactive monitoring with real-time tracking enhances data protection, fostering stakeholder confidence.

Benchmark your organization against your competitors and your industry. Monitor enforcement action in your industry and learn from their mistakes

Conducting a data privacy impact Assessment regularly in view of your policies and practices implementation. Regular monitoring and Auditing of your data privacy to prevent unauthorised assess to your data inventory Staff Training is very necessary and important to keep abreast with time