How to Quickly Create a ROPA with Transcend

What are records of processing activities (ROPA)?

As patchwork data privacy laws become increasingly complex and enforcement continues to ramp up, it’s critical that businesses maintain transparency in how they handle personal data. Creating and maintaining Record of Processing Activities (ROPA), a requirement of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Article 30, and helpful for understanding how data is sold or shared for the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), is one way regulators enforce this move towards data use transparency.

In short, ROPA are clearly documented inventories of an organization’s data collection and processing activities—detailing what personal data is collected, why it is processed, where it is stored, and who has access to it. A complete, well-structured ROPA typically contains:

• The name and contact details of the data controller and, if applicable, the data protection officer
• The purposes for data processing
• Categories of data subjects and personal data being processed
• Categories of recipients with whom the data is shared
• Information on data transfers to other countries
• The retention periods for different data categories
• A description of security measures in place to protect the data

The challenges of creating a ROPA

While creating and maintaining a ROPA is crucial for compliance, doing so manually can be a complex and resource-intensive task. Businesses can often struggle with:

• Identifying all the systems that store personal data
• Categorizing data processing activities, and
• Ensuring ongoing accuracy as new systems and processes emerge.

Not only that, but manual data mapping is time-consuming and can be prone to errors—making it difficult to maintain an up-to-date ROPA that meets regulatory requirements. Without automation, organizations risk missing critical data flows, leading to compliance gaps and potential penalties.

How to create a ROPA with Transcend

Privacy leaders can use Transcend Data Discovery, a next-generation, truly automated data discovery and classification tool, to create ROPA quickly and with minimal manual intervention. By deploying our default ROPA template, businesses can quickly discover where personal data lives and build a comprehensive data inventory without the need for manual tracking.

With Transcend Data Discovery, identified systems are categorized based on their known purposes, making it easier to align data processing activities with regulatory requirements. Plus, automated scanning of fields and columns within these systems helps determine what types of personal data are being stored, enabling better documentation and governance.

And, with business and regulatory environments evolving constantly, ongoing monitoring ensures consistent identification of new systems and datapoints, meaning that your ROPA is always accurate and up to date.

Follow these steps to learn how you can access your updated ROPA within Transcend.

1. Find your systems: Silo Discovery uncovers business systems using key integrations, like identity management providers (e.g. Okta) or enterprise cloud tools, to prepopulate your Data Inventory with systems in use. Alternatively, you can provide a list of systems to be imported.
2. Find personal and sensitive data within your systems: Transcend Structured and Unstructured Discovery retrieves the data points, data categories, and other relevant information from the systems and files used by your company.
3. Gather contextual data: Use Transcend Assessments to easily gather additional data from cross-functional stakeholders, including information about data transfers to third countries, retention periods for different data categories, and/or security measures.
4. Download your report: To access your ROPA, navigate to ‘Data Inventory’ and then ‘Reports’. There, you’ll also find the option to filter your reports by different criteria including systems owned by different departments and specific purposes of processing. You can also filter down by custom fields if relevant.

For more granular setup information, check out our documentation. If you have further questions on ROPA setup or scope, please reach out to our team.