Best Data Privacy Management Software

Brandon Summers-Miller
BS
Researched and written by Brandon Summers-Miller

Data privacy management software provides comprehensive solutions for users to manage their company’s privacy program, including replying to consumer requests or data subject requests (DSR/DSAR) and mapping sensitive data. Data privacy management software is used to achieve and maintain compliance with privacy laws and regulations. Employees such as privacy managers are the typical users of data privacy management software; however, these robust solutions offer workflows to allow other employees across the business, such as IT teams, to work collaboratively on consumer or DSR/DSAR requests for data access, amendment, or deletion. Businesses use data privacy management software to automate manual processes, provide visibility, and leverage reporting tools to manage their company’s privacy program.

These platforms include a centralized dashboard and have modules related to DSR/DSAR management, data discovery, and data mapping. For data discovery, some software solutions offer automated data discovery methods, others may offer workflow to manage manual, survey-based data discovery methods, and some software providers may offer both manual and automated discovery methods. Many data privacy management software also have additional functionalities of identity verification software native within the application, privacy impact assessment (PIA) software, privacy policy generation tools, cookie and website tracking compliance, and data breach notification functions.

Products in the data privacy management category often specialize in the specific country or region-specific data privacy regulation it supports, such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), Brazil’s Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados Pessoais (LGPD), and others.

To qualify for inclusion in the Data Privacy Management category, a product must:

Provide data mapping, discovery, and classification tools for sensitive data
Include consumer request or data subject request (DSR/DSAR) functionality
Include or integrate with partners to provide any additional features such as identity verification, de-identification or pseudonymity, PIA, breach notification, consent management, or website tracking scanning
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Best Data Privacy Management Software At A Glance

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135 Listings in Data Privacy Management Available
(312)4.2 out of 5
6th Easiest To Use in Data Privacy Management software
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(83)4.7 out of 5
12th Easiest To Use in Data Privacy Management software
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(159)4.5 out of 5
4th Easiest To Use in Data Privacy Management software
(224)4.8 out of 5
5th Easiest To Use in Data Privacy Management software
(195)4.7 out of 5
8th Easiest To Use in Data Privacy Management software
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(40)4.9 out of 5
1st Easiest To Use in Data Privacy Management software
Entry Level Price:$49.00
(123)4.6 out of 5
10th Easiest To Use in Data Privacy Management software
Entry Level Price:Free
(563)4.5 out of 5
15th Easiest To Use in Data Privacy Management software
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Entry Level Price:$120 Per month
Entry Level Price:$500.00

Learn More About Data Privacy Management Software

What is Data Privacy Management Software?

Data privacy management software helps companies comply with global data privacy regulations such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), Brazil's Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados (LGPD), and many such privacy regulations. The central functions of this software revolve around assisting companies in locating sensitive data such as personally identifiable information and responding to customer requests within legally mandated time frames.

Key Benefits of Data Privacy Management Software

  • Assist companies in discovering, mapping, and classifying their sensitive data either through automated discovery or via manual surveys administered by workflows
  • Include consumer or data subject access request (DSAR) workflow functions to ensure the company responds to the requester within the legally mandated time frame
  • Integrate with other tools to provide any additional features such as identity verification, de-identification or pseudonymity, privacy impact assessments (PIA), breach notification, consent management, or website tracker scanning

Why Use Data Privacy Management Software?

Data privacy management software is used by companies to manage their privacy programs to comply with global privacy laws such as GDPR, CCPA, LGPD, among other privacy regulations. In particular, this software helps companies process, within legally mandated time frames, their DSAR or consumer requests to access, port, or delete the personal data a company holds on them as allowed under the relevant privacy regulations.

To comply with data privacy regulations, companies must first locate the PII that they store or have access to. Data privacy management software includes functions to help discover such sensitive data.

Who Uses Data Privacy Management Software?

Companies that are subject to global data privacy laws use data privacy management software. The applicability of data privacy regulations differs per regulation but typically, mid-size and larger for-profit businesses are subject to these regulations. Nonprofit and small companies are frequently exempted, but it is a good practice to consult the specific regulation for applicability to a particular business or organization.

Within companies, the teams, departments, and common titles of staff managing privacy programs vary greatly. Privacy professionals may work under the legal department, in regulatory compliance, information security, information technology (IT), and corporate ethics. Other areas where privacy staff may be employed are marketing departments. This function can also be outsourced to a privacy service provider.

Irrespective of who is managing the privacy program within a company, employees from several departments across the business are often required to be involved in complying with data privacy regulations. IT staff may be tasked with locating consumer data; security teams may be required to protect PII and other sensitive data; legal and compliance staff may need to confirm that contacts and other legal obligations are met; employees in the marketing department may be responsible to ensure that consumer consent preferences are managed properly.

Kinds of Data Privacy Management Software

Data privacy management software is a relatively new addition to the technology solutions landscape and hence, many vendors in this space are only a few years old. Given how new this area is, companies are rapidly improving their offerings and technology solutions for their customers. At present, the main differentiators of this software involve which data privacy regulation compliance it supports and how the software discovers sensitive data.

Regulation-specific software — Many data privacy management software tailor their solution to a specific privacy regulation. For example, the more mature software markets focus on GDPR-related data privacy compliance as it was one of the first robust data privacy legislation. Other software providers tailor their solutions to meet CCPA or LGPD compliance. Some data privacy management solutions are regulation agnostic and can be tailored to fit any privacy regulation; these flexible solutions may be particularly helpful in addressing state-specific or local privacy regulations.

Automated vs. manual data discovery — The first steps for privacy compliance require an understanding of where a company’s sensitive data, such as PII, protected health information (PHI), payment card industry (PCI) data, intellectual property (IP), and other important business data is stored across multiple company systems including databases, applications, and on user endpoints. Data privacy management software includes methods to locate this data either with manual surveys or automated discovery.

  • Manual surveys — One method to uncover where a company stores sensitive data is to ask company employees who manage data where sensitive data is stored. This requires staff to manually fill out surveys or excel spreadsheets. Some data privacy management software providers offer prebuilt survey templates and workflow tools to administer this tedious process.
  • Automated discovery — Automated sensitive data discovery tools connect to a company’s databases, applications, and other data repositories and crawl for, identify, and classify sensitive data automatically. These tools offer up-to-date reports which can be beneficial when responding to auditor or data subject access requests. Many of these tools offer visual representations of the data so the user can see where the overall data is stored geographically and also create a map of an individual data subject.

Data Privacy Management Software Features

The main functionality of data privacy management software revolves around sensitive data discovery and mapping, DSAR management (or consumer request management), and consent management. The software often provides additional functionality or integrates with separate solutions to offer a host of other useful features. Some of the main features of data privacy management software include:

Sensitive data discovery and mapping — Sensitive data discovery functions help businesses locate sensitive data stored across company systems and map the use of that data.

Data subject access request (DSAR) management — DSAR software provides a DSAR intake form to accept data subject’s request to access, port, or delete their PII; provide a centralized view of all DSARs in process; alert administrators when it is getting close to the legally mandated response time; provide workflow tools to process DSARs across the organization; help with reporting tools and logs. Some tools also offer an encrypted communication portal to securely communicate and transfer DSAR data to a data subject.

Consent management — Consent management is increasingly becoming an important feature of data privacy management software as many data privacy regulations require either opt-in or opt-out consent from users before collecting, using, sharing, or selling their data. These features help companies obtain, track, manage, and update their user consent preferences to adhere to privacy regulations.

Additional Data Privacy Management Features

Vendor assessment management — Helps companies understand and determine risks associated with sharing sensitive data with their third-party vendors.

Cookie complianceAllows companies to ensure the cookies and other trackers they use on their website comply with user consents.

Data breach notification — Assists companies in informing end users if their information has been compromised in a data breach.

Identity verificationHelps companies authenticate the identity of a consumer prior to processing a DSAR.

Data de-identification or pseudonymity — Reduces the risk of holding PII and other sensitive data by pseudonymizing the data.

Privacy impact assessments (PIA)Helps companies go through the steps of a privacy impact assessment, as required by some data privacy regulations.

Legal information libraries — Provides an up-to-date library of information on data privacy laws and regulations that a company is subjected to, based on their location, size, with whom the company does business, and other determining factors.