Privacy automation solutions: do they work?
With the growing data privacy landscape, organizations are seeking solutions to automate compliance with regulations like GDPR, CCPA, and others emerging around the world. If your organization is of a certain size, manual processes can be inefficient. Fortunately, a number of software vendors now offer privacy compliance automation tools.
So we decided to compare the leading options.
Before we get to that, our take is that privacy is both a regulatory activity AND a customer-facing activity. So there’s no silver bullet. No software will fix staff who are careless in handling personal information. Plus, the more complex software packages take time and effort for staff to learn - both privacy staff and everyone else who is expected to use it — so there needs to be some thought about whether that time and effort investment is worth it.
Here we go with our reviews. Just a few of our favorites selected. There are many more on the market so we’ll have to come back to do more reviews in later blog posts.
OneTrust
OneTrust is one of the most widely used privacy management platforms, offering features like:
- Consent Management: Customizable consent banner builder to capture individual consent preferences. Supports granular preferences.
- Data Discovery: Scans infrastructure to identify where personal data resides, highlighting risk areas, including in unstructured data like emails and PDFs.
- Data Subject Requests: Intake forms and workflows to respond to DSRs like access, delete, and opt-out.
- Assessments: Built-in questionnaires to assess compliance with GDPR, CCPA, LGPD, and other global laws. They have even gotten ahead of events by offering their data governance and privacy solutions for AI systems. Generates reports and risk ratings.
- Policy Management: Central policy library with version control and templating.
OneTrust is comprehensive but also complex. Pricing is variable but would be steep for a small business. As the product catalog continues expanding, the platform warrants an evaluation for privacy teams.
DataGrail
DataGrail focuses specifically on automating GDPR and CCPA compliance built atop a privacy platform:
- Data Discovery: Scans infrastructure to create inventory of personal data. Leverages fingerprints to tie data back to individuals.
- DSAR Management: Automates validation, communication workflows, and response preparation for data subject/consumer requests.
- Consent: Customizable consent flows that capture proof of consent, manages preferences, and retains audit trail.
- Controller CRM: Tracks interactions with regulators and maintains heat map highlighting areas of inquiry.
This vertical approach brings advantages—DataGrail earned strong reviews for usability and fast deployment. Teams operating under strict data minimization mandates may find limitations, but an excellent option for CCPA/GDPR focus. Pricing undisclosed.
TrustArc
TrustArc stands out from broader GRC solutions. Capabilities span:
- Assessment Automation: Over 500 pre-configured questions for GDPR, CCPA, and custom assessments delivered through desktop or mobile app.
- Consent Management: Custom consent flows and preference management aligned to legal basis for processing.
- DSAR Fulfillment: Intake, identify verification, automated redaction capabilities to accelerate response.
- Website Scanning: Automated scans to detect compliance issues on public-facing sites and mobile apps.
The platform easily interoperates with existing infrastructure through over 250 out-of-the-box integrations and APIs. An intuitive interface enables privacy teams to work independently with minimal IT support.
Osano
The Osano platform provides an easy-to-use solution for consent, data subject rights, assessments, vendor risk management, and more. Less complex that some other solutions and less time-consuming for implementation.
Products include:
Cookie consent: out-of-the-box compliant banner templates
Subject Rights Management: streamline and automate the DSAR workflow
Data mapping: automatically discover data stores and classify the data they contain without relying on in-demand data analytics resources or manual processes.
Vendor Privacy Risk Management: assigns a privacy risk score so you can see which vendors meet your standards. Osano claims to have a dataset of over 11,000 vendors and growing.
Clarip
Clarip, founded by privacy professionals, emphasizes usability allowing for business user configuration. Functionality consists of:
- Assessment Design: Create questionnaires for vendors, partners or internal teams, applying scoring logic.
- Consent Preferences: Customizable consent banner builder and preference management dashboard.
- DSAR Workflow: Intake, identity verification, search tools, and response templates.
While light on higher level capabilities like data discovery and mapping, Clarip still warrants a look for fast deployment at an affordable price point.
Achieving ROIs on Privacy Spend
Any investment in privacy compliance technology should carefully match capabilities to organizational needs and resources available for implementation. Larger platforms solve more issues but require greater effort to implement.
As regulations expand globally, no company remains immune from privacy obligations to consumers and regulators. Fortunately, automation now provides real means to get compliant, even on lean budgets, when selected and deployed strategically.
Conclusion
Key considerations for evaluation should include level of configurability, depth of related integrations, and ease of use for Privacy teams. When you make contact with any of these providers, be sure to clearly tell the relationship manager what your existing processes are, and your pain points at the outset—an expensive tool to do something you already do well provides minimal value. Lastly, no product offers a magic pill, so change management and updated protocols must accompany any purchase.
Reach out to Waltzer for guidance building the business case or running an evaluation that compares the relevant factors.
