Why should a Responsible Party do a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA)?
Last week we looked at POPIA (the Protection of Personal Information ACT), and how to comply with POIA when it comes to running your business. We also shared key strategies to safeguard your business from data breaches, while staying aligned with regulations.
Protecting your customers personal data or information in today’s digital word isn’t only a legal obligation, it’s a core part of building trust and maintaining your business reputation. Conducting a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) helps you identify and manage risk associated with the collection, storage and use of personal information. This process will also mitigate the risk when a data breach occurs, because let’s be honest with ourselves, in today’s digital world it’s not if a breach will occur within your business, it’s WHEN a breach occurs and then knowing how to deal with it.
Embarking on a Privacy assessment within your business can be overwhelming, but it doesn’t need to be when you have a team of specialist onboard guiding you on the process and this can have several positive outcomes for your business, for example:
1. Increased Customer Trust, demonstrating a proactive approach to data privacy can strengthen customer relationships.
2. Strengthening your brand reputation.
3. Early Risk Detection.
4. Efficient Data Handling, doing a Privacy Impact Assessment can streamline your data collection processes, leading to improved operational efficiency.
The Privacy Impact Assessment doesn’t only identify risk areas but helps ensure you have an action plan in place and how to implement the plan, ongoing monitoring of the plan and finally reporting, so your business can develop a comprehensive, ongoing privacy management strategy.
Section 19 of POPIA emphasizes the responsibility of responsible parties (i.e., any entity or person processing 19 personal information) to ensure that the integrity and confidentiality of personal information are protected.
By using this section to your advantage on how to handle personal information with a high standard of security and privacy, aligning with best practices for data protection.
Contact A de Bruyn Attorneys today, so we can help you put together a secure privacy management strategy.