The D in GDPR

When implementing or managing our day-to-day GDPR activities, we often look at the regulation, advice from authorities, and cases but less at the personal data itself.

Yet, if we don’t know where personal data resides, what it means, what the quality is of the data, how “sensitive” it is, which policies apply to which data in which application or database, where it’s stored, etc., then it becomes hard to comply with GDPR and reduce the risks.

While the register of processing activities can provide us with some insights, it remains high level and cannot always reflect the many changes and details that go on in all databases, applications, and so on.

To really get a grip on personal data, we need to know and understand it in a comprehensible manner.

On top of that, we see an increase in data-related regulations that will come our way in the next one to two years – Data Act, Data Governance Act, AI Act, … – which will all require us to get to know technical and business details of our data to become compliant.

More and more organizations have understood that if they don’t understand their data, they won’t be able to get value out of it and won’t be able to comply with GDPR and a lot of other regulations.

Understanding your data, its quality, usage & risks and managing it correctly is a capability that is being increasingly adopted by organizations and is called “Data Governance.”

That’s why, at DPI, we offer the Data Governance course as part of our curriculum, provided by experts in the field who have years of experience with both Data Governance and Data Protection.

In this course, you’ll learn what data governance is, not just the technical aspect but also the organization around it, the roles, and how data governance is an interplay between business, compliance, IT, and data people.

Furthermore, we’ll also do a deep dive into how you can use and apply data governance for automating and increasing the quality of your GDPR activities and deliverables.

If we have sparked your interest, feel free to contact us at training@dp-institute.eu or take a look at our website to join us for the next course.

Christoph Balduck, the teacher of this course and author of this article, is CTO and managing partner at Data Trust Associates.