DPIA: Data Protection Impact Assessment

Simplify your organization's Data Protection Impact Assessments

Efficiently manage risks in both planned and ongoing activities to protect your business from legal and reputational threats. Ensure compliance with data protection regulations by streamlining your Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs) using RESPONSUM. Our solution helps you simplify the process, making it easier to identify and mitigate risks while keeping your organization compliant and secure.

What is a DPIA?

The DPIA is a crucial part of the Data Protection by Design principle, covered by Article 35 of the GDPR. Its main goal is to help organizations assess and control privacy risks linked to their data processing activities, ensuring they follow regulations and protect people’s privacy. To achieve this, organizations map out their processing procedures, evaluate potential risks, and put measures in place to reduce those risks.

DPIAs become necessary whenever processing activities are likely to pose a notable risk to individuals’ rights and freedoms. As a standard practice, they typically involve the following steps:

Challenges of a DPIA

The GDPR does not go into specifics on how to execute a DPIA, yet certain Supervisory Authorities, like the French CNIL (Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés) have already published guidelines on the topic. However, experience shows that the biggest challenges of performing a DPIA are more practical:

Getting accurate information

When the privacy team is not immediately involved in every project, you’re often unsure whether you have the latest or even complete information.​

Past actions documentation

In order to be compliant and meet the accountability requirement in GDPR, organizations are required to document their past assessments and actions  – not an easy feat in a spreadsheet.

Receiving information in time

Often, the biggest time-consumer is receiving information from colleagues. Everyone is busy, and it’s up to the privacy team to properly follow up on their requests.​

Continuous reevaluation

As organizations and processes change, DPIAs should be continuously reviewed and reassessed. Keeping track of those review schedules and consequential actions is no easy task.

Approach

Guided DPIA process

Experience effortless navigation with RESPONSUM! Our user-friendly interface guides you seamlessly from scoping to the final review, ensuring all crucial information is included. Save time with instant access to data through the integrated Records of Processing Activities in our DPIA module. Need extra insights or feedback? RESPONSUM is your go-to solution. Our communication and task delegation features make reaching out to colleagues a breeze. Stay in control and up-to-date by setting up review cycles effortlessly.

Pre-DPIA

Execute a quick pre-DPIA to see if a full DPIA is necessary

Identify & assess

Identify and assess the risks for the data subjects’ rights

Action plan

Decide on your action plan to mitigate the risks

Review

Monitor and review your DPIA regularly

Article

4 steps to executing flawless DPIAs

Dive into our blog to grasp the essence of DPIAs, understand their importance, and follow a concise guide for effective implementation. Enhance your data protection and ensure GDPR compliance.

Simplify DPIAs through software

Lynn Vleugels - Data Protection Officer

Lynn Vleugels - Data Protection Officer

“We were already keeping a good RoPA, but when we uploaded it into RESPONSUM, it was such a relief to see our data instantly available for all the other modules. It just made things so much smoother!”

Link the DPIA

Link the DPIA with other RESPONSUM solutions, such as the record of processing activities (RoPA), and have the data you need immediately available.

Clear overview

Have a clear overview of all the DPIAs in your organization and set up review cycles to ensure you are always up-to-date.

Boost communication

Enhance communication with other departments by immediately reaching out to colleagues through our built-in communication / task delegation features.

We speak your language

RESPONSUM is available in 9 languages: English, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Thai & Finnish. Require another language? Let us know!

Optimize your DPIA process

Book a demo with one of our privacy experts and take the first step to executing a DPIA four times faster.