Privacy impact assessment (PIA) software enables companies to evaluate, assess, track, and report on the privacy implications of their data. PIA software facilitates the operationalization of the PIA process, especially when handling complex organizations, policies, or systems at scale, thus reducing the amount of time spent conducting PIAs. These tools also assist companies in complying with privacy regulations, as completing PIAs is mandated by some privacy laws, such as the GDPR’s Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) requirements under Article 35 if a project impacts a data subject’s rights.
PIA software helps businesses achieve privacy-by-design by uncovering privacy risks, such as exposure of sensitive data or personally identifying information, associated with new company projects, processes, policies, strategies, systems, and so on. PIAs are comprehensive evaluations of a business’ privacy risks and are conducted prior to developing new initiatives; this is different than a privacy audit, which is completed retrospectively. PIAs are conducted by privacy officers or legal teams, but require participation from company executives, product teams, IT teams, security teams, and more to understand the full scope of a business’ unique privacy risk and outline solutions to improve an organization's handling of sensitive data.
Completing PIAs is one part of many in administering a business’ complete privacy program. Many data privacy platforms offer PIA functionality, along with additional tools related to implementing a full privacy program.
To qualify for inclusion in the Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) category, a product must:
Offer templated and customizable PIA questionnaires
Have built-in workflows that allow cross-organizational collaboration
Provide a dashboard to view PIAs in progress
Include reporting functionality
