Legal Threats from Privacy Laws

Recent privacy laws such as GDPR (France), CCPA (California), and many other privacy laws being enacted in states and other countries have severe financial penalties for disclosure of protected personal information. The definitions of personal information, penalties, and remedies have changed rapidly over the past few years.

Lineage is a foundational technology that allows new attributes and descriptors to be added to lineage objects (like “cities” on maps) such as the existence of personal information within a data store. Lineage (“roads”) tracks that a customer’s email address or their credit card number is not just in your CRM but can be spread to tens or even hundreds of systems: ERP, data warehouse, reports, data lake, customer portal, numerous Excel sheets and even external systems. The path of the data can be very complex and there are many possible ways to move and transform data. One thing should be clear — your data lineage has to be automated as much as possible.

As users investigate existence or remediation of personal information, knowing true sources and targets from data stores is critical. In this way, trust can be built across data stores and proposed new data paths.

Whether you are starting a privacy program, face customer requirements, or even employ a GDPR Certified Data Protection Officer (DPO), end-to-end data lineage can give you overall insight into ALL of your data. You will know where your data is, where records in your CRM or business database come from, and where it is held in your data warehouse.

ROI savings for this ongoing program:

Hard-money ROI: Avoid added consulting and point-solution lineage management tools
Soft-money ROI: Rapid response/less people time to prepare periodic filings and respond to regulatory requests. Build reputation for financial stability and effective management.