By
Alex Franch
March 23, 2023
The success of every GDPR compliance process depends on an unsurprising requirement: Know your data.
When you respond to a data subject request or when you create GDPR-compliant privacy policies, you must have a detailed map of what data you have, how it is collected and used and where it is stored.
This is why you need data mapping because it allows you to combine disparate data sources, have detailed overview of your data assets and streamline your GDPR compliance efforts.
Read more to learn all there is to learn about data mapping and GDPR.
A Data Map refers to a process that allows you to identify personal data you hold, where you store personal data, how you process it, and who you share this data with.
Let’s assume that you have a SaaS-based accounting software that you sell to accountants. When you want to send marketing emails to your prospects, you will need to customise your marketing emails to the specific needs of your prospects. Therefore, you will need to understand the previous purchase histories of your customers to personalise your offerings.
However, these data points will likely be in different databases, in different formats. For instance, your sales team might have these records in a CSV file whereas your marketing team has this data in excel files.
Combining this data will help you target your prospects effectively by drawing highly accurate insights about them.
In addition, you will better understand where this personal data is stored and which third-party tools are used to process this data.
Therefore, you need to carry out data mapping to have a detailed understanding of how personal data flows through your business, from the collection of personal data to its storage on third-party systems such as CRM tools.
When you decide to implement GDPR data mapping, you need to consider two key elements:
GDPR data mapping requires you to determine if you transfer personal data to third parties such as the third-party SaaS tools you use. For example, if you have names, email addresses and purchase histories of your customers and you store this data on an email marketing tool such as Mailchimp, you need to be aware of how you share data with Mailchimp.
Therefore, you need to identify all IT systems where you store and process personal data such as email marketing tools, cloud data storage applications and customer relationship management tools. For example, you may be using Zendesk for customer support and Hubspot for lead generation and customer management. Since you share personal data of your customers with these third parties, you need to describe what personal data is transferred to them and how it is stored and used.
After you identify the flow of personal data, you also need to report on its key elements such as:
GDPR compliance is a challenging process with highly complex requirements. To comply with the GDPR, you need to know what personal data you collect, who it is transferred to and where it is located.
Therefore, a robust data mapping tool is essential to ensure your GDPR compliance.
In particular, data mapping is critical to fulfil the following GDPR requirements:
There are 4 key challenges to implementing an efficient data mapping process for GDPR compliance.
Challenge 1: Identifying all third parties a company uses
Most of the small and medium-sized businesses, particularly SaaS businesses, use a wide variety of third-party software tools to carry out different business functions such as customer support, sales, accountancy and marketing. In fact, an average company uses around 110 saas tools.
Whats more, each of these tools collects and processes different types of personal data so creating an inventory of all these third party tools is quite a challenge.
Challenge 2: Time-loss
Inaccuracies and incorrect data during a data mapping process may cause your business to waste valuable time. For example, one study found that an sales representative wastes around 27% of his selling time due to low quality or inaccurate data.
Challenge 3: Keeping it updated
Since personal data is not static and it constantly changes, data mapping should be a dynamic process as well so that personal data is kept up to date. If personal data is not updated, inaccurate data may result in financial loss. For example, a study by Gartner showed that inaccurate data may cost a pre-seed start-up up to $18,000 per month
Challenge 4: Complex regulatory environment
Privacy is an evolving field where new privacy laws comes into force frequently. Furthernore, both the UK and the EU data protection authorities keep publishing new guidelines and more detailed requirements for GDPR compliance.
Keeping up to date with new laws and regulations is critical to data mapping. For example, the UK has introduced a new draft bill on Data Privacy and this Bill will make changes to records of processing activities requirements for businesses, if it becomes law.
Technically, you can manually map data from the data fields in source to the data fields in destination. Although the manual data mapping offers unlimited flexibility, it is likely to be time-consuming and prone to errors and inaccuracies as your business scales.
Therefore, most businesses use automated GDPR data mapping software. Automated GDPR data mapping software is a code-free tool that enables you to map data with a state-of-the-art scanning technology, combined with recommendations.
Using automated data mapping software tools have the following key advantages:
When it comes to choosing an automated GDPR data mapping software, you need to look into three main criteria:
With Privasee’s automated GDPR data mapping tool, you can streamline your GDPR compliance efforts and have an esy-to-use data mapping tool.
Let’s now look at how Privasee’s automated data mapping tool helps you carry out GDPR-compliant data mapping:
To summarise what we covered in this post:
Interested to learn more about how Privasee helps you implement GDPR-compliant data mapping?
Try our free GDPR audit and see for yourself!
You must keep your data map up to date. We recommend that you check it quarterly or twice a year and always when something changes in your business. For example when you use a new tool or vendor or use data for a new purpose.
Data map and Records of Processing Activities (ROPA) document are different both in nature and in their content.
While data map refers to an IT process where you identify personal data you hold, where you store personal data, how you process it, and who you share this data with, ROPA is a legal document required by the GDPR. Put simply, data mapping is a must for you to create ROPA and your ROPA is like an exported version of your data mapping exercise.
In addition to the details described in your data mapping exercise, your ROPA will also include additional information about your use of personal data as required by the GDPR. For example, your ROPA must explain what legal basis you rely on to collect personal data by using a third party tool like google analytics.
However, data mapping exercise is critical to creating a ROPA document that complies with the GDPR.
Ensure your policies are always up to date with Privasee, an AI powered GDPR compliance solution that does it all.