How does data protection officer build trust in customers via Privacy Engineering?

Today the business ecosystem is redefined by the way inpiduals work and communicate from distributed locations, the pace of digital evolution, growing security challenges, and guidance from regulators. Tejasvi Addagada, one of India’s first-generation data protection officers, says that this new normal has resulted in the accumulation of data, increased processing, and the birth of new technology.

With driving data protection and privacy, organizations are looking to manage personal data for an active focus on customer rights. Laws like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), IT Act, and upcoming PDPB guide how data can be collected from customers and then managed within their authority. Tejasvi states that the general principles of corporate Governance for organizations are aligned to foster an environment of accountability, transparency, and trust, thereby supporting a more purposeful society.

One can consider the opportunity to use a framework to prepare for upcoming regulations by embracing an offensive strategy. Such an overarching framework provides guiding thoughts to the privacy requirements as they get translated operationally into a controlled environment.

Most organizations start a data protection program by publishing a privacy policy to customers. Issuing a privacy policy in an easy-to-understand means to customers is generally a lucid cascade of the principles within the organization to customers. However, before publishing a privacy policy, a best practice is to understand the purposes and processing activities associated with personal data across business domains through a privacy impact assessment. An extension on digital channels around privacy policies is a cookie notice that provides information about what cookies are used.

As inpiduals translate a trust framework into implementable layers across people, processes, and technology capabilities, it becomes easier to implement a controlled environment. The people capabilities are associated with guidance through internal and customer privacy policy, maintaining customer data accuracy, preferences on data processing, customer requests for personal data, and a single view of customer relationships.

One can associate the next layer of process capabilities by designing changes with privacy thinking at the core, classifying data, maintaining the purpose of the processing as well as confidentiality, integrity, and availability of personal data.

Alongside data protection, data governance is proven to have a cascading positive impact on Corporate Governance. People outside the organization start trusting it as it actively stewards customer data.

Ensuring traceability to privacy frameworks needed by other jurisdictions of business operations ensures an overarching classification mechanism that applies across all customers irrespective of the region.  Another view of traceability with regulation can be attained by mapping the internal controls to a data management capability model as most privacy controls are data-driven. Privacy risk appetite articulates the tolerance levels for data risk that an enterprise is prepared to accept during the execution of its business strategy.

A strategic priority can be opening up the core fulfillment services of a Bank to other start-ups that can originate loans through their leads or customers. The intrinsic value of data improves as it is shared within an extended contractual Environment.

According to Anoop Sathyamurthy, a privacy engineer, the key to a faster evolution in privacy engineering is by discovering personal data across the systems, mapping them to business processes, and further to purposes while managing it digitally. The right mix of technology including master data management platforms, a privacy lake, data quality tool sets, intelligent catalogs as well as consent management platforms can drive automation in an organization. 
Mastering customer consent can unlock free potential - customers can provide their data for improved services based on their needs. A precursor to getting to this state is by creating trust in customers which can lead them to invest their data as an asset with the organization.

Assessment for impact on data protection cannot be a one-time activity, as many changes may seep in the risks which can be managed. Having change associated with personal data assessed for privacy risks, and managing these risks along with controls to closure through control owners and data owners will effectively make data privacy operations sustainable. All the aspects discussed in this article will assist the organization to formalize the data privacy office as a function within an organization while providing definitive results.