Whether the goal is compliance or data governance, to assess risk and apply necessary controls, organizations must be able to accurately track a piece of information (data) from its point of collection to its eventual destruction.

Unfortunately, data, its flow and usage, is a living organism which can change at any moment. Manual data mapping is a tedious, time consuming process which can get outdated as soon as it is completed if changes to data and its flows are not continuously monitored and automatically updated. As with any manual process, this means going back to the drawing board to repeat this exercise, wasting time and resources in the process.

Privacy regulations such as EU-GDPR mandate that organizations, both controllers and processors maintain accurate Records of Processing Activities (RoPAs) that must be provided to authorities on demand in the form of Article 30 reports. These reports must be accurate and up-to-date. In an ever changing and fluid IT environment, manually maintaining these RoPAs could be time consuming and prone to errors.

Development teams constantly find themselves at odds with their compliance counterparts while trying to stay ahead of the requirements set by their organization’s data privacy policy. Without automated processes and programmatic interfaces, they are forced to create and maintain processing records manually which distracts them from their core function - which is building great products.

Automated data mapping with enrichment by subject matter experts is essential to maintain the quality and completeness of personal data processed by the organization and to ensure an effective and streamlined business process. While automation is the desired end game, organizations struggle with how to migrate their existing operations to this new paradigm and to keep it synchronized with their ever changing data landscape.

SECURITI.ai’s Data Mapping Automation solution helps customers transition smoothly from their existing manual processes to a modern automated framework with minimal disruption.

SECURITI.ai can help!

Anyone who has gone through a manual data mapping exercise can attest to how tedious and time consuming it can be. It offers at best a static, point-in-time view of the processing activity which in many cases is outdated before its completion. With SECURITI.ai’s Data Mapping Automation module, organizations can:

• Maintain an accurate asset inventory by importing their asset database to SECURITI.ai's data catalog, inviting SMEs to create and maintain assets through guided assessments or by synchronizing to their CMDB environments
• Create and continuously enrich business processes through a collaborative, user-friendly interface
• Track changes to assets, processes and data handled by these systems through continuous monitoring and automated follow-up actions through flexible policy constructs
• Assess the risks posed by data processing activities through automated assessments
• Track vendor compliance
• Generate accurate, up-to-date reports including Article 30 reports on demand to maintain compliance against regulatory requirements.

All of this is particularly important in large organizations with limited resources and no single owner to oversee the use of large volumes of personal data by multiple business units.

GDPR Article 30 requirements mandate controllers and processors employing 250 or more people to maintain a record of processing activities under its responsibility. Such a record, among other things, should maintain:

• Purposes of processing
• A description of the categories of data subjects and of the categories of personal data
• The categories of recipients to whom the personal data have been or will be disclosed including recipients in third countries or international organisations
• Retention schedules of different categories of data, and
• General description of the technical and organisational security measures

To meet these requirements organizations need to keep these records accessible and up-to-date. Static spreadsheets maintained by SMEs in individual business units are a great start but offer limited opportunities for privacy teams to scale and adapt to evolving regulatory requirements. SECURITI.ai’s data mapping automation module automates asset and data discovery, scanning, classification along with data mapping and visualization to provide an accurate picture of the data landscape, the volumes and categories of data subjects and personal data being handled by individual processes and the third parties with which this data may be shared.

Lastly, with the rise of privacy engineering, development teams are looking for ways to design, build and manage products that process personal information while preserving the appropriate levels of privacy and security throughout the lifecycle of data that is processed. What if there was a way to bake privacy into the design and development process ensuring effective and integrated privacy-by-design principles in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). SECURITI.ai offers an API driven, automated data mapping approach that compliments the secure software development lifecycle by:

• Automating personal data discovery, classification and validation throughout the software lifecycle
• Automating intelligent PIA and DPIA assessments to go along with the data mapping activity
• Establishing effective privacy risk management that complements the SDLC process
• Providing privacy training to development teams

SECURITI.ai’s automated data mapping solution also consolidates all processing activities, streamlining the Data Subject Rights fulfillment process for organizations by intelligently linking all the discovered personal data to unique identities through an AI driven PeopleData-Graph building process. Breach management and response is also simplified with the availability of an accurate data map which includes an accurate description of any third party data transfers, identity and residency information of data subjects impacted by the data breach or incident.

Automated data mapping with enrichment by subject matter experts is essential to maintain the quality and completeness of personal data processed by the organization. The advantages of an effective and automated data mapping program includes:

• Time and Cost savings through automation
• Reduced risk of financial penalties and loss
• Reduced risk of brand loss

SECURITI.ai’s Data Mapping Automation can help improve your organization's privacy posture. Watch a demo to learn more.