Data Privacy Management Software Buyers’ Guide 2024

Data privacy management is the umbrella term given to describe the use of privacy frameworks and tools to protect individuals’ privacy rights, keep them informed, maintain compliance with regulations, and give them control over their data. In this guide, we’ll cover:

• Why data privacy matters
• How data privacy works
• The best data privacy vendors
• A features checklist
• Our recommendation for choosing the best data privacy management software
• Upcoming trends in the data privacy market

Why Data Privacy Management Matters: Data is constantly being collected. This ranges from email addresses, to biometrics, and credit card numbers. When this data falls into the wrong hands, considerable damage can be done to people, businesses, and organizations. 

• 94% of organizations say their customers won’t buy from them if data is not properly protected (Cisco)
• The average cost of manually processing a single data subject request is $1,524 (Gartner)
• The global data privacy software market size was valued at $2.76 billion in 2023 & is projected to grow from $3.84 billion in 2024 to $48.28 billion by 2032 (Fortune Business Insight)
• A hacker attack happens every 39 seconds (University of Maryland)

Data Privacy Management includes a series of technologies and capabilities that allow organizations to gain control their information, ensuring that it is secure and protected from attacks.

How It Works: Data Privacy Management uses a range of tools and capabilities to provide comprehensive visibility, control, and security. The processes commonly undertaken by Data Privacy Management tools include:

• Requesting consent for the collection of personal data: This may be done using web forms, pop up notifications, or in-app prompts.
• Ensuring personal data is secured. This is done using various measures including encryption, access controls, and regular security audits. 
• Responding effectively to security breaches: Things like automated incident response workflows and detailed breach reporting help to facilitate this.
• Keeping a thorough record of where and how personal data is stored: This record keeping of data locations, storage methods, access permissions, and retention periods is maintained using detailed inventories and metadata documentation.
• Maintaining the necessary compliance requirements: This is done by implementing and enforcing data protection policies, conducting audits regularly, and providing automated tools for monitoring and reporting. 

Best Data Privacy Management Providers:

• The Top 11 Data Privacy Management Software
  • BigID Data Privacy Suite
  • Collibra Data Privacy
  • DataGrail Data Privacy Platform
  • OneTrust Privacy Management
  • Osano Data Privacy Platform
• The Top 10 Privacy Software
• The Top 7 Data Masking Software

Features Checklist: When choosing a data privacy software solution, Expert Insights suggests looking for the following key features:

1. Risk and Privacy Assessment: Tools to assess and mitigate privacy risk help to identify and remediate vulnerabilities within your data management workflows.
2. DSAR Tracking: Automatically respond to data subject access requests in an accurate and timely manner – this helps in adhering to data protection regulations, maintaining transparency, and protecting data rights.
3. Data Discover, Classification, and Mapping: The ability to identify and classify important data ensures you gain a comprehensive overview of how data is being stored and used.
4. Privacy Configuration Tools: Privacy policies should be customizable, allowing you to easily create and deploy policies with ease.
5. Consent and Compliance: Managing and recording user consent is essential for maintaining compliance with data protection regulations.
6. Automated Updates: By ensuring the platform is properly patched with the latest security fixes and is operating in line with the most current version of any compliance standards is essential.

Our Recommendations: While individual organizations may have different priorities depending on their size and industry, we recommend looking for a data privacy management software solution that is:

• Scalable: For large enterprises especially, scalability is necessary for ensuring the system can handle fluctuating data volumes and data privacy requests
• Compliance Focused: This is vital for avoiding steep legal penalties, protecting sensitive data, and maintaining customer trust
• Easily Integrated: Seamless interaction with existing systems and processes ensures comprehensive data insights, smooth operations, and consistent enforcement of privacy policies organization-wide
• Easy to Use: Ease of use in a data privacy management solution enables quick adoption, efficient operation, and reduces the likelihood of errors occurring.

Future Trends: Some upcoming trends to look out for in the data privacy market include:

• Increased Focus On Children’s Privacy: Legislative measures related to the protection of children’s privacy are on the rise as children are entering the digital world younger than ever before.
• AI Policy And Governance: Concerns around the way that AI companies use people’s data without consent to better train their AI models. We will see increasing regulation and further debates around this topic. This also relates to children’s privacy, due to the need for proper age verification tools.
• Rethinking Business Models In Response To Privacy Legislation: Companies will have to carefully consider their operational strategies to ensure they remain compliant with GDPR and other privacy laws.
• The Growing Awareness Of Privacy Rights Among Consumers: Increasing consumer awareness means that companies will be expected to provide users with more control of how their data is handled.