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Consent is at the core the GDPR and other privacy regulations around the world. Consumers and data subjects must be able to provide clear and unambiguous consent before the collection of personal data. Consent and preference management is a way to give users control over the use of their personal information and provides options for choices about how your business interacts with them.

The first step in determining how to manage consent is to identify where it is tracked and which applications or programs rely on it. In this case, it is often sales, marketing or support applications such as CRMs or marketing automation tools. Typically this is handled by a preference manager or a consent management platform. The consent management platform may be a standalone system, or more often, part of the privacy compliance management platform or suite. Because, especially under CCPA, consent also applies to cookies, it is often bundled with a website cookie analyzer, cookie consent manager, and cookie banner generator.

 The consent management platform’s role is to handle the opt in or opt out consent, pass that information to other relevant systems, and to provide a mechanism for the consumer to adjust / change or withdraw their consent.

 A consent management platform should be able to store the name or other identifier of the consumer / data subject as well as the date/timestamp of the consent. Typically consent management will include an intake mechanism such as a web form and web hooks or API for communicating with the relevant systems.

Consumers must provide consent to be tracked on a website as well as for their data to be collected for marketing interactions. There are technologies available to help manage these processes for privacy consent.

One such platform is the Consent Management Platforms (CMP) which automate the management of what cookies the consumer agrees to be loaded on a given website. 

2B Advice offers a premium GDPR Cookie Consent Solution available for any size business or organization.

In addition, technology can support the management of collecting and storing opt-in / opt-out consent as well as preferences for how the data is collected and used. Such consent and preference management platforms help firms comply with data privacy regulations by giving users control over the use of their personal information and clarity about how it is being used.

The Consent Management Platform, or Consent Manager, stores opt-in consent and preference data, and handles the consumer’s request to change, “opt out”, or withdraw their consent.

The consent management process is part of the consumer’s first interaction with your company or website. Before you can gather information from them, you must obtain their consent to do so. The consent manager takes the action of gathering and storing the opt in consent that is required by law. The consent manager acts as a central repository and synchronizes this with other relationship management or marketing systems. A customer should be able to visit the preference center to opt out or withdraw their consent through “unsubscribing”.

Privacy management software is used to achieve and maintain compliance with GDPR, CCPA, and other state, national or regional data privacy laws and regulations around the world. As more regions adopt data privacy regulations, the complexity for multi-nationals grows exponentially. Robust, multi-language privacy management software can help organizations operationalize privacy and facilitate consistent and continuous compliance as well as reporting to requisite bodies such as data protection authorities and attorneys general.

A comprehensive privacy management software platform for managing CCPA compliance requires several core elements. These should include the following:

• Consent Management Platform
• Cookie Compliance
• Consumer Rights Management (SRR or DSAR)
• Policy & Notice Generator
• Data Inventory and Mapping
• Vendor Management
• Assessment Management
• Automated Workflows

This article will focus on the first requirement: consent management. The ability to manage consumer / data subject consent is at the heart of most data privacy regulations, making it an essential element of a privacy program.

Under the GDPR, the standard for data protection, consent is one of several lawful basis for data processing.  One of the challenges with consent is that it can be withdrawn at any time, and a method for withdrawing consent must be provided.

 As stated by Article 7 of the GDPR, the controller shall be able to demonstrate that the data subject has consented to the processing of her or her personal data. In addition, it should be noted that the GDPR requires that consent be valid, explicit, freely given, and to be opt-in through a “clear affirmative action.” It is not acceptable to assign consent through the data subject’s silence or by supplying “pre-ticked boxes.”

There are two parts to CCPA consent requirements. The first is “Do Not Sell”. The consumer must have a way to request that the organization not sell their personal information. The second part is the ability to opt-out of tracking by specific cookies.  In addition, under US email marketing law, a consumer must also be able to unsubscribe or opt out of future emails if they desire.