Managing a Privacy Compliance program for a growing number of data privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA can be time consuming and labour-intensive when using manual follow up and tracking via spreadsheets and Excel.
And there are certain requirements in both GDPR and CCPA the stipulate that subject rights requests or data subject access requests must be done within a certain number of days or your company is at risk of fines or penalties. In fact, timely response to subject requests is one of the biggest challenges companies currently face. Enter Privacy Workflow Automation.
What is an Automated Workflow?
An automated workflow for privacy compliance management is a set series of planned tasks to be performed in a chronological order. Once the workflow is initiated all the parties involved in performing the tasks in it will be notified at the right moment on what to do, how to do and in what time frame the given task must be completed.
What Are the Advantages of Workflow Automation?
There are numerous advantages of workflow automation to improve your privacy compliance. Cost effective, scalable, privacy compliance management platforms can leverage automated workflows which save time, reduce risk and errors, and allow companies meet their privacy goals with fewer resources and time invested while also reducing the risk of missing critical deadlines. Workflow automation removes repetitive tasks such as emails, reminders, assignments, and tracking. Virtually anything that needs done repeatedly can be automated with workflows.
What is Workflow Automation?
One of the key capabilities of a technology-enabled privacy program is automated workflows which ensure a more standardised and efficient fashion of dealing with recurrent situations related to privacy compliance. By organising the tasks in a set order, it is possible to minimise the risk of overlooking certain crucial activities, to identify possible improvement in the end to facilitate the monitoring and the documentation process.
Workflow automation is a series of triggers that can schedule tasks, make assignments, send and email or a variety of other activities that are part of privacy compliance management.
What Are Uses of Automated Workflows?
Workflows can be automatically triggered by certain action such as creation of a client, a processing activity or a ticket. In the latter, 2B Advice PrIME offer the possibility to select also special type of ticket as triggers. This comes handy when dealing with time sensitive situations such as data breaches or subject rights requests.
What Privacy Compliance Task Can Be Automated With a Workflow?
There are many useful tasks that automation can support. Here are just a few of the tasks that can be automated with a workflow.
- Marketing Automation Workflow: Handling a Subject Rights Request in a timely manner
- Email Workflow Automation: Handling a Data Breach Notification
- Legal Workflow Automation: Implementation of a record of processing activities (RoPA)
- Audit Workflow Automation: Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) or Privacy Impact assessment (PIA)
Which Teams Can Use Automation in a Data Privacy Program?
In addition to the data protection team, other departments such as Human Resources, Finance, Compliance, and Marketing could take advantage of this great tool. From a data protection standpoint working with the workflows facilitate and encourage compliance with Art. 5 GDPR, especially with the accountability and accuracy principles. By documenting the activities that are planned and performed at each and every step of the process via measures ensures its auditability.