Privacy is becoming a central issue in today’s businesses. The emergence of AI and the data used to train these models coupled with cybersecurity breaches are making privacy an essential, yet challenging aspect to implement. Compliance standards like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which focus largely on user privacy, help organizations address these privacy challenges. However, navigating these complex compliance waters can be overwhelming.
To help companies in meeting these standards and protecting the privacy of their users, tools like Vanta are indispensable. Let’s break down how Vanta’s features map directly to key requirements of the GDPR and the CCPA, and how they help businesses stay on the right side of the law without the usual stress.
Automated Monitoring and Alerts
GDPR and CCPA require businesses to maintain robust data security practices to protect consumer data. Article 32 of the GDPR mandates “appropriate technical and organizational measures” for data security. Similarly, CCPA emphasizes reasonable security measures to prevent data breaches.
To meet these requirements, Vanta continuously monitors your systems, scanning for security gaps, configuration issues, and policy violations in real time. Its automated alerts notify your team about potential risks as they occur so you can quickly patch vulnerabilities and maintain compliance. This proactive approach improves data protection and reduces the risk of breaches, which are costly in terms of fines and reputation damage.
Data Access and Permission Controls
Under GDPR, data access must be tightly controlled and limited to only what’s necessary for legitimate processing purposes (Articles 5 and 25). The CCPA likewise requires companies to limit data access internally and ensure only authorized personnel can interact with personal data. These requirements mandate organizations to establish appropriate data access controls and processes to prevent unauthorized access.
Vanta simplifies access control by automatically tracking user permissions and enforcing least-privilege access. Whether you’re managing cloud accounts or employee devices, Vanta makes sure that data is accessible only to those who truly need it. This feature reduces the chances of insider threats, an important aspect of protecting personal data under both regulations.
Data Inventory and Classification
Data mapping is a key element of GDPR compliance, specifically for understanding what data you collect, where it’s stored, and how it’s processed (Articles 30 and 35). While the CCPA is not so stringent, it still requires businesses to disclose the types of personal data collected and sold. This means you need secure data inventories that classify data automatically based on pre-existing rules and workflows, and Vanta offers exactly this feature.
Vanta makes data inventory and classification straightforward by identifying and categorizing data flows within your organization. You get a clear view of all sensitive data you process, which makes responding to Data Subject Access Requests (DSARs) seamless.
Automated Evidence Collection
Another key aspect of both regulations is audits.
Compliance audits under GDPR and CCPA can be daunting, requiring evidence of your data practices and security measures. GDPR demands detailed documentation of security measures and compliance efforts (Articles 24 and 30). CCPA isn’t as strict, but companies must still prove compliance, especially if consumer complaints arise. Meeting these audit requirements can be nerve-wracking for organizations without tools like Vanta, which centralizes the collection and storage of all your evidence.
Vanta’s automated evidence-collection feature eases audits. It continuously gathers compliance-related evidence like access logs, security controls, and process updates without interrupting your team’s workflow. This audit trail allows you to showcase compliance at any point, reducing the burden of manually gathering documentation.
Risk Assessment and Management
GDPR places a strong emphasis on Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs) for high-risk processing activities (Article 35). Though the CCPA doesn’t explicitly require risk assessments, demonstrating a mature approach to risk management helps protect organizations from enforcement actions. More importantly, it reduces the risks of data breaches and the resulting lawsuits and reputational damage that come from them.
Vanta provides built-in risk assessments tailored to help you identify and address potential data risks proactively. The platform walks you through each step, helping you identify high-risk activities and implement measures to mitigate them. You’ll have a risk management strategy that’s aligned with GDPR expectations and valuable for CCPA compliance, too.
Incident Response Support
Despite the best-laid plans and processes, data breaches can happen. It can be due to small missteps that are hard to control. In such cases, you need an incident response plan to mitigate the damages that stem from these data breaches.
This data breach response and notification are pivotal under both GDPR and CCPA. GDPR mandates breach notification within 72 hours (Article 33) while the CCPA also requires notifying consumers if there’s a breach of unencrypted personal data.
Vanta can be helpful in such situations, as it offers detailed incident response templates and playbooks to guide your team in the event of a data breach. The platform’s monitoring capabilities also ensure you’re aware of incidents immediately, so you can respond, investigate, and notify as required. This readiness helps minimize regulatory penalties and consumer backlash.
Policy Management and Customization
Policies are essential for compliance because they provide uniformity to all your security specifications. This is also why the GDPR and CCPA insist on creating and maintaining security policies that revolve around data privacy. Articles 5 and 24 of the GDPR focus on policy management and customization. Again, the CCPA doesn’t mandate these policies and their management, but organizations can benefit from the transparency and consumer-centric approach that these policies provide. However, implementing and updating these policies can be time-consuming and this is where Vanta helps.
Vanta offers ready-made policy templates you can customize to align with your business’s specific practices. From data retention policies to privacy notices, Vanta ensures that your policies reflect compliance obligations. You can also manage and distribute these policies, keeping everyone in the loop.
Handling Data Subject Requests (DSRs)
Under the GDPR, data subjects have the right to access, correct, and delete their data (Articles 15-18). The CCPA grants similar rights to consumers, including opting out of data sales and requesting the deletion of their data.
Vanta streamlines this data subject request handling by automating key steps, from verification to fulfillment. This platform enables organizations to quickly track and address these requests within the regulatory deadlines. This automation also reduces the manual burden of responding to requests while maintaining the accuracy of record-keeping for audit purposes.
Continuous Compliance Monitoring
Compliance isn’t a one-time achievement but an ongoing commitment. GDPR and CCPA can evolve over time to meet the changing business and technological environments, and this means, you must have a system in place that can scale or adapt to these changes as they occur.
One way to stay on top of these changes is through continuous monitoring. Vanta’s continuous compliance monitoring ensures that your systems remain compliant, even as internal and external factors change. From software updates to regulatory tweaks, Vanta adapts to keep you on track, giving you peace of mind that you’re not falling behind.
Thus, these are Vanta’s features that help you meet the strict requirements of both the GDPR and the CCPA.
Final Thoughts
GDPR and CCPA compliance can seem like a never-ending list of demands. But with tools like Vanta, you get to automate much of the heavy lifting and focus on what really matters—building trust with your customers while safeguarding their data.
Try Vanta today!