Privacy Assessments Are Increasingly Required
We Help You Comply While Adding Value To Your Brand
In today’s data-driven world, safeguarding personal information is crucial for maintaining trust and compliance with the ever-evolving and rapidly expanding privacy law landscape. Privacy assessments go by differing names depending on the jurisdiction in question and the processing to be assessed but include Data Privacy Impact Assessments (DPIAs) and Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs). Regardless, the assessments are closely related to the foundational data mapping required for a privacy program and focus on ensuring that data processing and associated privacy risks are assessed and mitigated. Aside from best practice motivations, privacy assessments are increasingly mandated by law such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the California Privacy Protection Agency Regulations of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), the Colorado Privacy Act, and Colorado’s AI Act.
Comprehensive DPIAs To Comply With An Expanding Range Of Laws
Privacy assessments are thorough evaluations of data processing that aim to identify and mitigate potential privacy risks. These assessments are particularly crucial for high-risk processing, including those involving sensitive personal information, automated decision-making, profiling, and artificial intelligence (AI), which are often subject to stringent regulatory scrutiny.
Key Aspects Of Our Privacy Assessment Services:
- Automated Decision-Making and Profiling: We evaluate the implications of automated decision-making processes and profiling activities to ensure they comply with applicable privacy laws. This includes assessing how decisions are made and ensuring transparency and fairness in these processes.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) Assessments: With AI playing an increasingly significant role in data processing, our assessments focus on the ethical and legal use of AI. We help you understand and mitigate the privacy risks associated with AI, ensuring that your AI systems are compliant with current regulations in the United States and in other jurisdictions, such as the European Union and its recently passed AI Act.
- Regulatory Compliance: We ensure that your data processing activities meet the specific requirements of GDPR, CCPA, CPRA, Colorado Privacy Act, and Colorado AI Law. Our expertise in these regulations helps you stay ahead of compliance obligations, avoiding costly penalties and reputational damage.
- Mitigation Strategies: Following our assessments, we provide actionable recommendations to address identified risks. Our goal is to help you implement effective privacy measures that protect personal data and enhance your overall data governance framework.
Anatomy Of A Privacy Impact Assessment
Though the exact substance of a privacy assessment may differ depending on the applicable laws and processing activity types, there are several key themes and components that comprise a comprehensive privacy assessment, including the following:
- Data Processing Type: The starting point of a privacy assessment is to identify the data processing, including its purpose, technical functions, capabilities, and scope so that risks can be assessed and mitigated.
- Personal Information Processed: It is essential to identify the kinds of personal information collected. It can range from the more benign, such as IP address and name, to the more sensitive, such as social security numbers and biometrics. The kinds of personal information collected will greatly affect the risks assessed.
- Data Mapping & Transfers: Though a data map should be a precursor to privacy assessments, as part of an assessment, data flows should be documented, including disclosure to service providers and associated data processing agreements (DPAs) and cross-border data transfers. This has implications for risk and compliance, such as in the context of the Data Privacy Framework (DPF).
- Privacy Notices & Disclosures: Privacy notices and related disclosures, including for particular processing types such as those involving AI or automated decisions or profiling, should be accounted for in the assessment to ensure that compliance obligations and broader transparency goals are met.
- Administrative & Technical Safeguards: Especially in relation to more sensitive or high-risk processing activities, ensuring adequate safeguards, including cybersecurity measures, is critical. For example, access controls play a leading role, and ways to monitor any unauthorized access are of great importance.
- Privacy Rights Compliance: Specifics about how privacy rights compliance, ranging from data subject access requests to deletion requests (DSARs), among others, should be outlined for processing activities.
- Applicable Jurisdictions & Related Laws: Note the jurisdictions and laws applicable to the processing activity being assessed. Some of the most common laws of relevance are sector-specific laws such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the healthcare context, as well as comprehensive privacy laws from across the globe. There are also processing-specific laws, most notably in the AI context.
- Identify Risk & Mitigate Accordingly: Risks identified in the privacy assessment process, ranging from third-party vendor risk to sensitive data disclosure and rights compliance, should be noted with corresponding mitigation steps to minimize said risk also noted and implemented. If the risk threshold is too high, the processing activity must not be employed. The exact threshold is highly specific and will include factoring in the processing type, risks, and laws in question.
We Help Clients Assess Privacy Risk
At RICHT, we are a privacy law firm helping clients protect personal data and maintain compliance with a dynamic regulatory landscape. Whether using an in-house “homegrown” privacy assessment solution or from a vendor such as OneTrust, our privacy assessment services offer you the experience and insights needed to navigate the complexities of data privacy law, ensuring your business is secure and compliant.