The following is an excerpt from ‘The 2022 State of Data Visibility Report’—a survey of technical leaders across different industries on the state of their data visibility and inventory efforts—looking at the biggest challenges they face, and the most obvious opportunities for improvement. Download the full report here.
New research shows the majority of companies still face steep challenges in keeping track of the personal data they hold—posing a problem for effective privacy compliance.
A company’s ability to know precisely what personal data they control and how it’s being used is critical for fulfilling multiple privacy law requirements: completing data subject requests (DSR), identifying risky data processing activities, and creating and maintaining records of processing activities (ROPA)—a requirement of GDPR Article 30.
But how are companies actually doing when it comes to knowing how and why they use customer, user, and employee data?
To better understand the problem, Transcend surveyed technical leaders across different industries on the state of their data inventory efforts—focusing on the biggest challenges they face and the most obvious opportunities for improvement. Our research finds that:
In 2022, against a backdrop of globally increasing privacy regulation, data visibility is throttled by data system sprawl, reliance on manual processes, and insufficient resources.
As a result, the data mapping process is slow, inefficient, and, for a majority of respondents, incomplete—a staggering two-thirds of companies still don’t have an accurate picture of the data they hold.
