Streamline Privacy Impact Assessments with Transcend Assessments

Transcend, the one-stop privacy platform that makes it easy for companies to encode modern privacy requirements into their data ecosystems, has today released a new Assessments product aimed at reducing the work and risk associated with processing personal data. 

This first-of-its-kind offering builds on Transcend's automated data discovery, classification, and governance capabilities by proactively flagging to privacy teams when a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) may be required, auto-suggesting relevant metadata, and automatically highlighting incomplete assessments across a company's data map.

“We’re thrilled to add to our industry-leading privacy platform—trusted by leading brands and loved by privacy practitioners—with this new functionality that furthers our goal of making the challenging work of privacy easy for companies, through robust tools and technology,” said Transcend CEO and co-founder Ben Brook. 

“Transcend Assessments ensures all departments and teams can proactively identify, monitor and adjust for the data processing risks associated with new system adoption, new product creation, and other business projects. It empowers privacy leaders with increased visibility and controls to protect personal user data, without the tedious workflows and increased operating costs,” said Brook.

Data sprawl challenges legacy assessment processes

As a result of continuous system sprawl and shadow IT, two-thirds of companies today report that they don’t have an accurate picture of the personal data they collect and process. Without centralized data visibility, risk and privacy assessment management has become an operational burden for privacy teams, leaving companies with compliance gaps and privacy risks.

Compounding this, today’s privacy leaders face ambiguity in Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) and Transfer Impact Assessment (TIA) requirements, including understanding what specific information is required or when an assessment is required. 

“Privacy professionals rarely have a quantifiable, easily defined process for kicking off, compiling, and approving Privacy Impact Assessments,” said Brandon Wiebe, Transcend General Counsel and Head of Privacy. “Because of these operational challenges, many of today’s assessments are not able to practically meet regulatory compliance, minimize an organization’s  data processing risk, and protect their end users.”

The power of Transcend Assessments

With today’s announcement, Transcend enables privacy professionals, legal counsel, and Data Protection Officers (DPOs) to handle privacy assessments more comprehensively, efficiently, and easily—increasing visibility into data processing risks, fostering better user privacy protections, and reducing operational burden. 

Key features include:

• Triggered action items: When new data silos are added or discovered by Transcend Data Mapping, Assessments will auto-suggest the review of a new assessment. 
• Auto-assist Assessment completion: Out-of-the-box templates include pre-populated fields with data discovered through a company’s Data Map or Terraform code inputs, jump-starting assessments to fit the unique shape of an organization’s data, and minimizing manual operations.
• Live collaboration: Cross-functional projects require easy to use, cross-functional tools. Transcend allows users to edit an assessment simultaneously, enabling seamless, real-time collaboration.
• Approval and status tracking: Transcend Assessments includes powerful tools to identify outstanding tasks, documents missing key stakeholder input, and flag assessments pending DPO approval.
• Embedded visibility: Easily sort your Data Map and identify completed or missing DPIAs or TIAs by data system, data category, vendor, processing purpose and more. 

Learn more about how Transcend Assessments works at transcend.io/assessments.