Aligning data privacy responsibility with operational reality

Once the exclusive domain of legal and compliance, data privacy is now a major responsibility for IT. When privacy issues emerge, IT professionals are on the spot, not necessarily as the team that absorbs privacy risk but the one accountable for the tools and visibility to proactively manage it.

When the board asks questions or when the auditors arrive, IT management must be ready with answers about checking the box for data privacy compliance, taking steps to mitigate third-party vendor risk, complying with reporting requirements and setting appropriate policies for data governance, especially around AI systems.

This is a tall order for data privacy and security and it’s compounded by the operational reality that available resources rarely match these expanding responsibilities.

Responsibilities and Reality

Several factors contribute to the disconnect between privacy expectations and operational capacities.

Privacy functions typically operate with minimal staffing while being organizationally siloed from IT operations. Yet IT leaders are expected to provide centralized accountability for privacy, yet they don’t always have the corresponding authority or visibility needed to support that responsibility.

Visibility. Data flows through IT systems, but its exact location and ownership often remain unclear. In other words, there’s no single source of data truth. Without unified monitoring of these complex pathways, privacy breaches become discoverable only after damage occurs.

Third Party Risk. Many privacy teams lack visibility into which vendors access personal data. This visibility gap creates compliance exposure that ultimately reflects on IT leadership and creates ownership confusion. Without protection and collaboration and shared visibility, things fall through the cracks.

Showing Proof. No one wants to get slammed with a violation for poor data handling. Authorities expect evidence that companies have taken steps to implement reasonable preventative measures –documentation many IT departments struggle to produce.

Dynamic data. Modern data environments create perpetual compliance challenges as data continuously streams in and throughout organizations. Maintaining accurate data inventories becomes nearly impossible through manual processes. Simultaneously, data subject requests (DSRs) are on the increase while records of processing activities (RoPAs) consume enormous legal and IT resources.

Furthermore, data integrations are a major concern. After all, who hasn't learned the hard way that not every catalog or pre-built integration supports every system, workflow, or business logic?

Best Practices

- Data mapping creates a dynamic data inventory that is direct and actionable for all involved to find clarity and purpose with enterprise data. Such an investor can facilitate the building joint workflows, clear responsibilities for data ownership so everyone is working through the same data inventory.

- Strive for more sophisticated automated behavior between tools and purpose. Automation helps to avoid repetitive tasks, delivers oversight, flags risks, track third party behavior and manages data integrations.

- In the aftermath of a breach, automation produces a record of that proves the checklist was complete, and appropriate steps were taken to avoid an incident. Auditors are less likely to issue steep fines for violations if IT can produce a report with this proof. Automation also frees up more time to analyze risk and refine processes.

- Take a no-code approach to integrations. No-code not only expands the number but enhances the quality of integrations. No-code enables each integration to be customized per the organization’s exact needs and on IT terms.

- Continue to focus on real-time visibility to enable the holy grail of the IT enterprise: monitoring and control

Helpful Capabilities

Data Mapping. Given the centralized role that CIOs and CISOs have for enterprise privacy, there’s a need strong collaboration and shared visibility with teams that are responsible for privacy yet have different priorities and reporting structures.

Data Mapping for inventory discovery and data classification are essential and typically done through a portal that provides a window on how data moves through the enterprises system and where personal data is accessed by which vendors.

By mapping and classifying data, a portal can enable one source of data truth for all aspects of privacy data and ensure that all privacy and legal teams are working with the same dynamic data inventory.

Automated Integrations. As more people exercise their data privacy rights, and more privacy mandates pass, the number of data subject requests has increased.

These requests are driving demand for automated processes that can keep pace with the time-consuming burden of foundational tasks like building and maintaining Records of Processing Activities (RoPAs) and Data Subject Requests (DSR). DSRs and ROPAs can result in data bottlenecks and constrained resources.

No Code Approach. Not only are privacy regulations complex and always changing, but the average organization also now connects to dozens of data sources, requiring big libraries of pre-built integrations and an API catalog rat race to build APIs.

When data reporting on this level starts to pile up, automated data integration becomes a game changer, so build data integrations that are easily facilitated with any backend system, platform, and SaaS apps. No-code integrations are a game changer in this respect. No-code allows IT teams to freely build, customize and maintain integrations that match internal systems, workflows, and logic - enabling faster deployment and easier maintenance of DSR handling, without developer overhead.

AI Agent. With all the complexity and intricacies of privacy management, there’s been an imbalance of resources and expectations, and it’s been ongoing for years. Automation has been helping to solve this imbalance, by cutting through the complexity. Now, core privacy tasks can be supported by an AI Assistant that can be purpose-built to automate core tasks, not just make suggestions.

AI agents are embedded with the privacy operations platform to intelligently analyze actual systems, how data is used and classified. It can help to build RoPAs automatically, freeing up valuable time for strategic initiatives. Beyond simply automating tasks, a privacy AI Agent can identify potential data risks, including shadow IT systems that lack necessary security controls to misclassified information.

Clear context on why these are risks along with actionable insights to help IT teams make informed decisions and mitigate potential issues proactively.

Summary

For IT, blind spots are not only a technical challenge but also organizational. Each exposure can be a chance to demonstrate strategic leadership by building greater trust with your team, users, privacy teams, and the board. Visibility also leads the way forward to getting ahead of regulatory changes.

Treating privacy blind spots seriously helps to build an agile, secure IT organization that is accountable, collaborative, and ready for growth. Forward-thinking IT leaders can turn compliance challenges into an operational advantage.

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