Many organisations are still relying on outdated methods for privacy management, which are becoming increasingly ineffective. Some have no dedicated tools and build their privacy program on spreadsheets, while others use legacy platforms that fail to meet modern needs and aren’t designed to leverage advancements in technology. Here are some of the key challenges faced by modern privacy teams:
- New compliance requirements: Many organisations are struggling to integrate new compliance requirements into existing privacy programs, which may not yet be prepared to scale.
- Emerging issues: Companies are dealing with new state laws and various emerging issues that impact privacy from different directions. AI introduces new data privacy concerns, ethical considerations are becoming more pronounced, and third-party data processing adds another layer of complexity.
- Lack of collaboration: Legacy platforms hinder collaboration between business and IT departments, where compliance often falls low on the list of priorities.
Given the stakes, privacy concerns have become business-critical and require substantial investment. Privacy practitioners are increasingly tying privacy initiatives to broader business outcomes, leading to more successful and impactful programs.
A new wave of modern privacy management platforms is emerging to address these challenges. These innovative solutions go beyond merely setting up mature privacy programs. They focus on efficiency, aligning privacy initiatives with business goals, and fostering collaboration across the organisation.
Let’s take a look at the benefits of using a next-gen privacy solution like TrustWorks.
How modern platforms like TrustWorks can help
Legacy tools are often dependent on manual processes, making it a real challenge for organisations to maintain strong privacy programs. Frequently, they also require specific expertise and support from either a consultant or a dedicated employee with training on the tool.
These outdated methods struggle to keep up with organisational changes, such as new projects and vendor relationships, resulting in a lack of visibility and increased compliance risks. And when we closely compare these legacy solutions with next-gen platforms like TrustWorks, the differences become even more apparent.
Let's take a look at the biggest differences below.
1. Instant visibility
Spreadsheets: Traditional spreadsheets can't provide instant visibility into data managed by vendors or in-house systems. They are static and manual, lacking real-time updates.
Legacy platforms: These either require manual data entry or offer expensive data discovery modules, which can be cumbersome and costly.
Next-gen platforms: TrustWorks, leveraging AI, not only provides comprehensive information about data processing but also scans vendor documentation to identify new capabilities, analyse sub-processors, and detect AI use as required by the AI Act. TrustWorks gives privacy teams better visibility, helping to mitigate potential risks.
2. RoPA and DPIA maintenance
Spreadsheets: Maintaining RoPAs and conducting DPIAs using spreadsheets is manual, unstructured, and difficult to manage.
Legacy platforms: These platforms use questionnaire-based updates, which are still very manual. Business and IT teams often avoid these questionnaires, creating additional work for privacy teams who must chase down the required information.
Next-gen platforms: TrustWorks uses AI-assisted gap analysis and updates, enriching RoPA maintenance. This significantly reduces the time modern privacy teams spend on these tasks, making the process more efficient and less burdensome.
3. Data Subject Requests (DSRs) automation
Spreadsheets: Manually managing DSRs with spreadsheets is impractical and time-consuming.
Legacy platforms: These either rely on manual processes or require expensive data discovery add-ons, making DSR management inefficient.
Next-gen platforms: TrustWorks automates the entire DSR process. It uses pre-built connectors to handle access, erasure, and rectification requests seamlessly. By integrating with Customer Support, HelpDesk systems, and internal ticketing platforms, we ensure end-to-end DSR fulfilment without lengthy implementations of complex solutions. Learn how Glovo improved its operational metrics and reduced response times by 70%.
4. Privacy-by-design and collaboration with Business and IT
Spreadsheets: Offer no support for privacy-by-design or collaboration features.
Legacy platforms: Provide very limited collaboration features, often based on questionnaires, which are not very effective.
Next-gen platforms: TrustWorks offers visibility into ongoing business and IT projects from their early stages. AI-assisted project documentation analysis provides insights about compliance requirements, impacts on existing processing activities, and established policies. Additionally, a privacy code scanner verifies processed and shared data. This fosters better collaboration between privacy, IT, and product teams on delivered projects and features.
5. AI governance
Spreadsheets: Managing AI governance manually through interviews and data entry is inefficient and prone to errors.
Legacy platforms: Some do not support AI governance at all, while others still rely on manual registers.
Next-gen platforms: TrustWorks provides automated discovery of AI use cases across vendors, source code, and projects. Real-time discovery keeps the AI registry up-to-date, which is crucial as AI adoption grows. The platform also offers risk-level recommendations and automation of relevant controls, preparing companies for the AI Act and other regulations and frameworks like NIST and ISO 42001.
Enhance efficiency and collaboration with a modern privacy platform
The key takeaway is clear: modern privacy platforms offer far more capabilities than traditional tools, and they make it easy to demonstrate ROI by significantly reducing manual tasks.
While some companies have moved from inefficient spreadsheets to legacy systems, these often remain manual and require substantial work for deployment and maintenance. The real opportunity lies in adopting user-friendly, automated next-generation systems.
At TrustWorks, our community of privacy professionals engages in live open discussions and roundtables about how technology can enhance modern privacy teams. Join our community to be part of these insightful conversations.
A scalable and collaborative privacy management platform like TrustWorks can transform your privacy operations. Book a demo to discover how modernising your approach can improve agility, promote collaboration, and drive efficiency in your privacy program.
Krzysztof Szypillo
