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Privacy by Design (PbD) is a set of principles and methodologies that are used to implement privacy controls and measures into the design of software, services, and websites. PbD helps businesses address privacy risks earlier in the product development process, which can reduce the risk of a data breach or user-exposure incident. With so many privacy scandals hitting the news over the past couple of years, it’s no surprise that consumers have high expectations for privacy protections. Businesses must proactively adopt new strategies to meet those heightened expectations while simultaneously preparing for potential new regulations. Privacy by Design can help you achieve both of these goals by integrating privacy protections into your software from the early stages of development onward. In this blog post, we’ll explain what PbD is and why you should adopt it as part of your company’s digital transformation strategy.

The need for PbD is greater than ever. Data breaches, fraud, and identity theft are on the rise and consumers want more control over their personal data. People are demanding better protections from companies that collect their information and they won’t stand for business-as-usual in the digital age. Privacy by Design is a set of guiding principles for building privacy protections into your software, services, and websites at every stage of development. These principles help ensure that privacy requirements are addressed during the design process rather than as an afterthought. PbD helps businesses meet heightened expectations while simultaneously preparing for potential new regulations. Privacy by Design can help you achieve both of these goals by integrating privacy protections into your software from the early stages of development onward.

Privacy by Design is more effective when adopted early in the software development process. To illustrate this, let’s consider two scenarios: In Scenario 1, you are working with an established product and you want to include some privacy protections to get ahead of any regulation changes. You have an hour to make a change that will take two hours for your team to complete. Which scenario would you choose? In Scenario 2, you are developing a brand new product from scratch. You want to include some privacy protections from the earliest stages of development onward so that it’s built-in from the beginning. Which scenario would you choose?

The most prominent reason why PbD is important for business is that it can help you avoid data breaches and user exposure. Data breaches are one of the biggest risks for businesses and have been in the news a lot lately. In 2018 alone, there have been numerous high-profile data breaches (Equifax, Facebook, Yahoo!…). PbD can help prevent data breaches by finding vulnerabilities before they happen. PbD takes a proactive approach to privacy protection. It requires developers to think about the potential privacy implications of their product from the beginning and throughout the development process. The goal of PbD is to integrate privacy protections into your software early on without having to make costly changes later on. Privacy by Design also helps avoid user-exposure risk. This occurs when companies release products with little or no thought given to how users might react to them, often leading to unintended consequences like upset customers or embarrassing media coverage. By integrating privacy protections into your software from the beginning and throughout with methods like Privacy Impact Assessments (PIA) and Privacy by Design Reviews (PBR), you can address these risks proactively rather than reactively once they arise.”

The outcome of a PIA should identify cases where more specific risk assessments, i.e., DPIA-EU, DPA-US or DTIA need to be carried out.

Whether we are talking about a PIA, a DPA, or a DPIA, typically the governing regulation provides guidelines around areas of risk. The GDPR has the broadest definition in that DPIA is required when the processing is “likely to result in a high risk to the rights and freedoms of natural persons”. However, US state data protection acts have fairly specific definitions.

Most often full data protection assessments or data privacy impact assessments are required reactively, in line with specific regional or national privacy regulations and related to specific activities such as prior to introducing a high risk processing activity or new technology or ones that bring heightened risk to consumer privacy or security such as profiling or targeted advertising.

Privacy by Design will help ensure that your company is prepared for upcoming regulatory changes. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a perfect example of the new regulations to which all businesses must adhere. This regulation, which went into effect on May 25, 2018, has sweeping implications for how companies collect and handle personal data. With GDPR in full force, you could be subject to fines up to €20 million or 4% of annual global turnover if you fail to comply with the law. What steps should you take? You need to adopt privacy by design practices so that your business is GDPR compliant and prepared for more stringent regulations in the future. Privacy by Design ensures that all systems are designed with privacy built-in, meaning companies can start preparing before the rules go into effect. Click HERE for a free guide from Google on Privacy by Design!

The result of a PIA enables regulatory compliance, improves control over personal data throughout the data life cycle, and determines authorization and access management. It assists in the prevention of data breaches and personal data misuse or abuse. Importantly, it helps IT, privacy and security leaders to quantify risk to consumers and apply suitable mitigating controls in a timely manner.

On May 25, 2018, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will go into effect. GDPR is a wide-reaching regulation that regulates how personal data can be collected, stored, and processed by an organization. It also places strict rules on how companies are allowed to handle any data breaches they might experience. One of the major components of GDPR is the concept of Privacy by Design. Organizations that implement PbD will not only be in compliance with the new regulation but will also be more prepared for handling a data breach or complying with other privacy regulations in the future. The best way to ensure your business is ready for GDPR? Implement PbD from day one.

The PIA pinpoints the area that need implementation and improvement for a cohesive and risk adverse development of the data protection program. From the PIA the organization will gather intel on the need for DTIA and what and where a DPIA in needed.

In essence, any project related to the processing of personal data either introduces a new processing activity or at minimum applies new technology to existing processes, and this may cause risk and attack surfaces to change. An initial impact assessment conducted at the initiation of a project protects against the need for retroactive assessment and an endless loop of remediation. An initial assessment can identify where any special categories of personal data or in particular, specially defined high-risk activities are or might be in play.

After you have conducted your organizational information audit, then you would begin building your records of processing activities. The record of processing activities (RoPAs) allows you to make an inventory of data processing and to have an overview of what you are doing with the concerned personal data. RoPAs will include significant information about the data processing activities being carried out.