Man using virtual interface showing PrivacyOps for privacy compliance

PrivacyOps: Reimagining Privacy Compliance

Following several high profile incidents highlighting the harm that can be done when personal information is mishandled or abused, there is now a growing awareness that privacy is a basic human right. A wave of new privacy regulations such as the European Union’s GDPR, California’s CCPA, Brazil’s LGPD, and more aim to give consumers greater control of their personal information held by companies.

Enterprise organizations are pivoting to be able to efficiently comply with these new regulations. However, traditional compliance and privacy management practices driven by periodic manual surveys, rampant data sprawl across on-prem and cloud data stores, and complex coordination across multiple organizational silos make this challenging.

PrivacyOps is an emerging framework that reimagines how to efficiently implement privacy management throughout an organization. Much like DevOps has emerged as a more agile and effective way to operationalize software development, PrivacyOps promises the same for privacy compliance.

So, What Exactly is PrivacyOps?

PrivacyOps is the combination of philosophies, practices, cross-functional collaboration, automation, and orchestration that increases an organization’s ability to comply with a myriad of global privacy regulations reliably and with greater speed.

PrivacyOps is anchored in real-time people data intelligence. Automating the discovery of personal data and mapping that data to its rightful owners provides real-time views of regulatory risks and empowers organizations to respond swiftly to compliance mandates such as Data Subject Requests.

A PrivacyOps framework also embraces a centralized, secure collaborative workspace for coordinating and automating tasks among key stakeholders across multiple organizational silos. This approach avoids Personal Information (PI) sprawl that happens with email or other messaging channels, and enables a comprehensive record of all privacy compliance-related activity.

The following four systems form the basis of a PrivacyOps framework::

  • System of Engagement: This system facilitates collaboration between teams relating to privacy-related information across a safe and secure platform. This is safer and more reliable than sending personal data over messaging systems or emails for review and approvals.
  • System of Insights: Using AI, bots, and intuitive visualizations, this system provides real-time insights into all aspects of privacy compliance, including PI data risks, DSR fulfillment status, regulatory compliance posture, vendor risks, user consent, etc., all in one place.
  • System of Automation: This system automates and orchestrates complex tasks like DSR fulfillment, PI Data linking, consent lifecycle management, recording audit records, etc. to reduce cost and avoid penalties.
  • System of Records: This system helps organizations keep a record of all privacy-related information such as People Data Graphs, assessments, data maps, regulatory templates, and vendor documents in one place.

When these four core systems are used in close synchronization, they promote efficient cross-functional collaboration among teams, helping make privacy compliance easy and effective. As a result, an organization that has a robust PrivacyOps program scales its data privacy compliance operations multiple-folds with no real increase in resources or costs.

What Are the Benefits of Adopting the PrivacyOps Approach?
Given the rise of global privacy regulations and recent advancements in machine learning, adoption of the PrivacyOps approach helps bring together IT, development, legal, and security teams to work together to comply with global privacy regulations accurately and efficiently.

There are many benefits of adopting a PrivacyOps approach, including:

  • Enables a better understanding of data privacy regulations and compliance requirements across all functions of the organization.
  • It provides a real-time view of data privacy risks that exist within the organization.
  • Increases agility in complying with ever-changing global privacy regulations
  • Ensures the reliability of various aspects of privacy compliance across the organization.
  • Saves time and money through end-to-end automation and improved efficiency.
  • Scales privacy compliance to support a vast number of data stores, consumer requests, and assessments.
  • Increases the expertise and privacy understanding of teams across an organization.
  • Enables effective collaboration across various teams such as privacy, legal, IT, cybersecurity, development, marketing, and support groups.
  • Develops a unique, trust-based market position with both current and prospective clients.

Key Takeaways

In this rapidly evolving era of data privacy, organizations are challenged to stay ahead of the curve – adapting to new and evolving regulations and an increased demand to honor consumer’s privacy rights. Embracing a PrivacyOps framework enables these organizations to cost-effectively address these challenges and position themselves to be trusted custodians of personal data.

While myopic businesses might hesitate to change the status quo of how compliance is done, the benefits of harnessing automation and machine learning will quickly pay for itself in increased productivity, lower costs, reduced liability, better accuracy, and improved trust equity with customers.