Data Privacy Management Software
Data privacy management software provides effective solutions that enable users to properly manage their company’s data privacy programs and ensure compliance with data privacy laws and regulations.
The data privacy management process itself allows enterprises to effectively secure the sensitive personal data of their customers, clients and stakeholders as mandated by various regulatory entities and their frameworks including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The regulatory standards that a particular business or organization must abide by will largely depend on a few factors such as region, type of operation and industry. For instance, public institutions and non-profit orgs that don’t process data of European citizens may not comply with the GDPR standards.
The role or functionality of data privacy management software, as a whole, is much broader than that of a conventional data protection system. This is because data privacy encompasses protection, meaning this category of management software is concerned about managing the privacy of sensitive information and not just security. A software solution of this caliber is designed to deliver comprehensive solutions that help users manage their organization’s data privacy initiatives and programs, including policies and protocols for replying to consumer data subject access requests, otherwise referred to as DSAR requests as well as mapping sensitive information. The software is used to accomplish and ensure compliance with various data privacy laws and regulations.
Data privacy management software puts an emphasis on assisting businesses and organizations with their efforts to ensure compliance with privacy laws and regulations, especially those that deal with data collection processes and handle sensitive customer information. In today’s digital world, the need to effectively manage and protect user privacy has become more and more evident. This category of software is primarily designed to help companies store and secure their visitors’ and customers’ personal data, not just for ethical purposes but also in an effort to maintain trust between the business and its end users.
Data privacy management solutions are also tailored to facilitate the transition process of companies, from manual to more automated privacy management processes, saving time and effort for IT administrators, data managers and privacy stakeholders. There is some overlap, in terms of functionality, between data privacy management systems and GRC (governance, risk and compliance) software solutions. However, unlike data privacy management where the focus is quite distinct—i.e., it specializes in data privacy management and protection—GRC solutions are broader and less specialized.
Data privacy management software provides the tools and functionalities that companies need to properly evaluate and measure their data privacy compliance, adhere to privacy laws and regulations as well as to conduct reliable impact assessments. The main goal with this approach is to empower businesses and organizations by helping them to secure sensitive end user data within distributed environments. A data privacy management system helps companies save time, effort and resources as it is capable of automating the core processes and policies pertaining to data privacy. This class of software also eliminates or at least reduces human error while maintaining regulatory compliance.
Implementing the right data privacy management solution allows you to handle a few key tasks, one of which is data collection or locating and capturing sensitive customer data. Before you’re able to achieve compliance with various data privacy laws and regulations, you first have to grab a hold of all the sensitive data that goes through your business and the first step is to locate where they reside, where they are collected or captured. Data privacy management systems are equipped with tools that allow them to scan scattered or distributed networks, cloud systems, applications and endpoints so they collect and analyze structured and unstructured data.
Another key function of data privacy management software is the automation of data discovery and classification process. The software effectively eliminates the need for employees to perform manual data collection and classification, which may result in inaccurate, inflexible and inconsistent outcomes. It also leverages automation technology to successfully analyze data patterns and trends in order to detect personally identifiable information (PII) and reclassify all the sensitive data in accordance to the ever-changing privacy laws and regulations.
Apart from data discovery and classification, data privacy management solutions also provide businesses and organizations with features that deal with data subject access request (DSAR) management. This particular system can generate a DSAR intake form that accepts the data subject’s formal request to access, port or completely delete their personally identifiable information or PII. It can also offer a more centralized view of all data subject access requests in process, automatically notify administrators and stakeholders when the legally mandated response time is getting close, as well as provide workflow solutions and tools to help process DSA requests across the entire organization.
Some DSAR management systems also provide robust reporting and data logging tools, as well as fully encrypted communication portals, allowing for a more secure communication process and transfer of DSAR data to a target data subject.
Then there’s the consent management function, which is increasingly becoming a crucial feature in data privacy management software and the privacy programs they help manage for enterprises and organizations. The importance of this feature is increasing for the simple fact that many data privacy regulation nowadays require either an opt-in or opt-out consent from end users prior to the personal data collection process. The opt-in and opt-out consent dictates whether or not a company has the permission to collect, use, share or sell the end user’s data. This feature also gives businesses the ability to acquire, monitor, maintain and modify their user consent policies in an effort to comply with privacy regulations and standards.
Cookie compliance is another common feature of data privacy management systems that often work in conjunction with consent management solutions. It allows businesses and enterprises to efficiently manage the cookies and other trackers they implement on their website, so that they maintain strict compliance with user consent.
Today’s enterprises generate more data, more personally identifiable information than businesses of the past. This has resulted in an increasingly difficult process of identifying where all the data are collected or stored. Without the valuable insight of where data are stored, spotting sensitive information from the noise and figuring out whether or not they are subject to regulatory standards is near impossible. This is why implementing the right data privacy management software is truly beneficial to businesses and organizations, regardless of size and scale.
The top-tier data privacy management solutions are specifically tailored to ensure and maintain compliance, regardless of the disconnected or dispersed characteristics of PII and other sensitive data, as well as the ever-changing nature of privacy laws and regulations. This category of software provides businesses a competitive advantage, specifically in the discovery of hidden data. Companies that implement the right data privacy management tools will have the ability to efficiently scan a broad range of formats and data classifications. This can result in uncovering sensitive data that may otherwise be hidden or impossible to find without the proper tools.
A good data privacy management software solution provides enterprises and organizations with the ability to store sensitive data and other personally identifiable information in compliance with the governing data privacy laws and regulations. It allows administrators and stakeholders to generate detailed reports to effectively demonstrate compliance to specific regulatory standards. All this can help mitigate potential risks and significantly reduce time to remediation.
Another benefit of using data privacy management solutions is its ability to index sensitive data. With the right data privacy tool, admins and other authorized personnel have the ability to quickly perform both recurring and ad hoc queries with regards to the sensitive data that go through their network. By capitalizing on this function, the potential network strain as well as the lead times can all be avoided or at least reduced significantly.
Data privacy management software is a vital digital solution for any business or enterprise that values and strives for consistent regulatory compliance. By having the ability to effectively discover or identify sensitive data, monitoring them closely and making sure that the appropriate policies and protocols are put in place to ensure compliance and avoid data breaches, companies are more than capable of managing the difficulties and risks that are typically associated with the data collection process and end user privacy.
Data privacy management software is primarily used by enterprises and organizations that want to optimize and streamline their data privacy programs in an effort to maintain compliance with various privacy laws and regulations, which include regulatory standards implemented by HIPAA, CCPA, PCI DSS, the EU’s GDPR and Brazil’s LGPD, just to name a few. To be more specific, this category of software helps businesses of different sizes and scale effectively process their DSAR, all within the legally mandated time frames.
Data privacy management solutions are ideal for companies that are subject to strict data privacy laws and regulations, both locally and globally. The applicability of data privacy standards and regulations may vary, depending on several key factors. However, midsize and large for-profit businesses are typically subject to such rules and regulations. There are many different data privacy management systems available in the market, with different price points, feature sets and capabilities. A free trial is a good entry point to this class of management software.
