A Comparative Analysis of the NIST Privacy Framework vs. the EU’s GDPR

In today's hypervolume, data-driven digital era, which is marked by increasing cybersecurity risks, organizations must prioritize robust cybersecurity measures to protect sensitive data and ensure compliance with privacy frameworks and global data protection regulations.

To address these challenges, comprehensive frameworks like the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Privacy Framework (Version 1.0) in the United States and robust regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union have been developed.

While GDPR establishes strict data protection regulations for businesses operating within the EU, focused on privacy and the protection of personal and sensitive data, NIST is a voluntary tool that offers a flexible, risk-based approach mainly geared at boosting cybersecurity across federal agencies and other sectors in the US.

Organizations should tread cautiously, as the stringent GDPR impacts more entities than many initially realize. To put things into perspective, the GDPR hasn’t shied away from fining tech giants billions of dollars in non-compliance penalties, demonstrating the seriousness of establishing adequate safeguards to ensure compliance with regulatory standards.

This guide compares the NIST Privacy Framework and GDPR to understand their similarities and differences. It enables organizations to better align their cybersecurity and data protection strategies globally and ensure compliance across different regulatory environments.

Overview of the NIST Privacy Framework

Officially released in January 2020, the NIST Privacy Framework follows the structure of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. It is a voluntary tool that enables organizations to manage privacy risks associated with data processing amidst evolving data use scenarios by adopting improved privacy engineering practices that support privacy by design concepts, eventually protecting individuals’ privacy.

The NIST Privacy Framework is structured around three key components: the Core, Profile, and Implementation tiers. These components are designed to assist organizations in developing robust privacy protection measures. Let's discuss these components in detail.

Core

The Core is a collection of privacy-protection actions and results that enables the executive level of an organization to communicate priority privacy-protection activities and results down to the implementation and operations levels. It’s divided into five key functions: Identify, Govern, Control, Communicate, and Protect. Here's a brief overview of each component:

Identify-P

This foundational function outlines developing the organizational understanding to manage individual privacy risks arising from data processing, conducting risk assessments to identify resources that need protection, and understanding the cybersecurity risks associated with them and the business environment.

Govern-P

This function outlines developing and implementing an organizational governance framework to continuously understand the organization's risk management priorities, which are influenced by privacy risk. These include establishing organizational privacy principles and policies, determining legal and regulatory requirements, and knowing organizational risk tolerance.

Control-P

This function outlines establishing and implementing relevant initiatives that help organizations or individuals manage data at a detailed level, enabling them to manage privacy threats.

Communicate-P

This function outlines the development and implementation of appropriate initiatives that help individuals and organizations gain a reliable understanding of data processing and its associated privacy issues.

Protect-P

This function outlines the establishment of appropriate safeguards to ensure the successful delivery of critical infrastructure services. It supports the ability to limit or contain the impact of a potential cybersecurity event by establishing access control, ensuring data security, conducting regular maintenance, and utilizing the latest technology to safeguard data integrity, confidentiality, and availability.

Profiles

Organizations may use Profiles to assess their current privacy practices and create targets for their privacy activities. The outcomes from the Core that best correspond to an organization's unique requirements, risk tolerance, and goals are chosen to create a Profile. This allows for deployment that is specifically matched to the organization's broader risk strategy and goals.

Implementation Tiers

Implementation tiers assist organizations in making informed decisions about how best to manage privacy risk by considering the types of privacy risks associated with their systems, products, or services and the effectiveness of their established procedures and resources for handling such risks.

The tiers range from Partial (Tier 1), Risk-Informed (Tier 2), Repeatable (Tier 3), and Adaptive (Tier 4), assisting organizations in assessing how they handle privacy risk and moving toward a more dynamic and optimized risk management strategy.

Collectively, these components assist organizations in adapting the principles of the NIST Privacy Framework to their unique requirements. This allows them to successfully manage privacy risks while promoting responsibility and compliance.

Overview of the EU’s GDPR

On May 25, 2018, the EU implemented the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a comprehensive data protection regulation and by far the most stringent law. The GDPR empowers individuals with additional control over their personal data and standardizes data protection regulations across all EU member states, enabling organizations to streamline compliance.

The GDPR is not specific to the EU but applies to any organization operating within or outside the EU that offers goods and services to customers or businesses in the EU. It imposes strict obligations related to data processing and handling, requiring organizations to ensure the privacy and protection of personal data, obtain explicit and informed consent from individuals before processing their data, and provide transparency about how their personal data is processed.

It also grants individuals several rights, such as the right to access their data, the right to erasure, the right to rectification, the right to restriction of processing, the right to data portability, the right not to be subject to automated decision-making and profiling, and the right to object. Noncompliance penalties can go up to €20 million, or 4% of the firm’s worldwide annual revenue. Key principles include:

Lawfulness, Fairness, and Transparency – Data processing must be lawful, fair, and transparent. This implies that it must be conducted ethically, legally, and non-detrimental to the data subject, who should also be informed about the use of their data.

Purpose Limitation – Personal data should be obtained for specified, explicit, and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes.

Data Minimization – Data collection should be kept to a minimum by only collecting and processing the data that is required for specified purposes.

Accuracy – Data must be kept accurate and up to date.

Storage Limitation – Personal data should be kept for as long as it is necessary for the purpose it was initially collected.

Confidentiality and Integrity – Data must be processed in a manner that ensures appropriate security, protection against unauthorized or illegal processing, and against accidental loss, destruction, or damage by using appropriate technical or organizational measures.

Accountability – The data controller is responsible for and must be able to demonstrate compliance with the other principles of GDPR, ensuring accountability for data processing activities.

Comparative Analysis

Similarities Between the NIST Privacy Framework and GDPR

The NIST Privacy Framework and the GDPR share several core concepts and objectives in terms of protecting personal data and promoting privacy. Here are some of the key similarities between the two:

Focus on Privacy Risk Management

The NIST Privacy Framework and GDPR emphasize the importance of identifying, assessing, and managing privacy risks. The GDPR's principles and compliance requirements enforce this critical need, while the NIST Privacy Framework offers organizations a structured approach to mitigate these risks proactively.

Data Protection by Design and by Default

The NIST Privacy Framework promotes privacy by design, encouraging organizations to integrate privacy into their system designs from the start. Similarly, the GDPR mandates that data protection safeguards be built into products and services from the earliest stage of development and that privacy-friendly default settings be used.

Accountability

Both emphasize accountability. The NIST Framework encourages organizations to make accountability a cultural value, ensure accountability at all organizational levels, and develop governance strategies that ensure accountability for their privacy practices. Under GDPR, data controllers must ensure compliance with the accountability principle, which includes implementing appropriate technical and organizational measures, taking responsibility for what they do with personal data, how they comply with the other principles, establishing comprehensive privacy policies, and maintaining records of all data processing activities (RoPAs).

Transparency

The NIST Privacy Framework and the GDPR emphasize transparency with individuals about collecting, using, and sharing their personal data, a fundamental requirement. Under NIST, this means implementing transparency policies, processes, and procedures for communicating data processing purposes, practices, and associated privacy risks. Under GDPR, this means all information sent to the general public or the data subject must be concise, clearly understandable, and written in plain language, and where necessary, visual aids such as graphics must also be included.

Security Measures

The NIST Privacy Framework and the GDPR emphasize the need to implement appropriate technical and security measures to secure personal data. NIST provides organizations with a structured approach to selecting and prioritizing strategies to mitigate privacy risks associated with data processing.

Similarly, the GDPR requires organizations to adopt appropriate technical and organizational measures to ensure a level of security appropriate to the risk, such as pseudonymization and encryption, ensuring the ongoing confidentiality, integrity, availability, and resilience of processing systems and services, regularly testing, assessing and evaluating the effectiveness of technical and organizational measures for ensuring the security of the processing.

Regular Monitoring and Continuous Improvement

The NIST Privacy Framework and GDPR both promote the assessment and improvement of privacy practices. The NIST Framework's structured approach supports ongoing monitoring and adjustment of privacy policies to evolving data privacy risks and landscapes, whereas GDPR mandates frequent risk assessments of privacy practices, especially for high-risk processing.

At its core, the NIST Privacy Framework offers a flexible, risk-based approach that may assist compliance with GDPR and other evolving privacy laws and regulations, whereas GDPR provides precise legal responsibilities and principles that are essential to comply with to avoid noncompliance penalties.

Differences Between the NIST Privacy Framework and GDPR

Although similarities exist, the NIST Privacy Framework and the GDPR differ fundamentally in their nature, scope, and specific requirements. Here are some of the key differences between the two:

Voluntary Framework vs Legal Obligation

The NIST Privacy Framework is a voluntary tool designed to improve privacy practices and assist organizations in managing privacy risks. It does not carry legal non-compliance penalties. In contrast, the GDPR is an obligatory legal regulation that all organizations handling the personal data of EU residents must abide by. The GDPR imposes severe fines and noncompliance penalties.

Scope of Application

NIST Privacy Framework is intended to be flexible so that any organization, regardless of size, industry, or extent of data processing, may utilize it to enhance its privacy management practices. In contrast, the GDPR focuses particularly on protecting individuals’ personal data within the EU. It applies to all industries and kinds of businesses that deal with the personal data of EU citizens.

Specificity of Requirements

NIST Privacy Framework provides a flexible framework that organizations may customize to fit their own requirements and risk profiles. It encourages organizations to create their own procedures in accordance with their privacy risk landscape. In contrast, the GDPR imposes specific requirements on organizations, such as consent, data subject rights, data protection impact assessments, data breach notifications, and the appointment of data protection officers, among other key requirements.

Enforcement and Compliance

The NIST Privacy Framework is a voluntary tool. Hence, there are no regulatory agency enforcement or compliance audits. It functions more as a manual for organizations to assess and improve their privacy management practices. However, the GDPR is implemented by several regulatory bodies across the EU, which have the authority to audit organizations, impose fines, and require adjustments to compliance practices deemed unfit.

While protecting privacy is the goal of the NIST Privacy Framework and GDPR, these differences demonstrate that they approach it differently and use different tools and strategies.

How Securiti Can Help

Securiti’s Data Command Center enables organizations to comply with the NIST AI RMF by securing the organization’s data, enabling organizations to maximize data value, and fulfilling an organization’s obligations around data security, data privacy, data governance, and compliance.

Organizations can overcome challenges in hyperscale data environments by delivering unified intelligence and controls for data across public clouds, data clouds, and SaaS, enabling swift compliance with privacy, security, governance, and compliance requirements.

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