Data Privacy Buy-In: The Usual Suspects and What to Say to Them

Getting the business to say “yes” to data privacy isn’t easy. Yet it remains one of the central tasks a data privacy professional must undertake. 

After all, you can’t protect consumers, protect your organization, and achieve compliance without the right resources at your disposal. So, before you can worry about the finer points of your privacy assessments workflow or the best way to embed privacy-by-design principles in your organization’s development process, you need to get the powers that be to agree when you ask them for resources.  

Fortunately, getting to “yes” is a simple matter of getting to know the person you’re talking to, understanding what they care about and framing your request in terms they can comprehend. When it comes to individuals with the power to make or break your privacy program, there are a few usual suspects we can expect to encounter. 

For the CFO: Data Privacy Unlocks Value 

For Chief Financial Officers (CFOs), the benefits of data privacy solutions are centered squarely in unlocking value by avoiding cost, facilitating business transactions, and freeing up resources that can be spent elsewhere.  

Many stakeholders have an allergy to solutions that save money rather than generate it; typically, this is not the case with CFOs, who understand better than most that a dollar saved is a dollar earned. 

But they may not be familiar with all the ways that a data privacy investment can yield savings. 

Avoid the Hidden Costs of Non-Compliance 

Avoiding data privacy fines is compelling, but the true cost of noncompliance goes far beyond statutory fines. The cost associated with remediation, customer churn, and loss of trust will be compelling factors for the CFO to consider. 

Prove Value During Due Diligence 

Furthermore, data privacy compliance is often a prerequisite when exploring avenues to increase the value of the organization. Data privacy is now part of M&A due diligence and may increase the organization’s value in future IPOs or fundraising efforts.  

Be Insurable 

Prospective partners, customers, and third parties expect the organizations they work with to be adequately protected, and many cyber-insurance companies refuse to underwrite businesses that lack robust data privacy resources. In fact,  31% of insurance underwriters view privacy violations as their primary concern for 2024. Without this protection, other organizations will be far more wary of any potential deals or partnerships. 

Keep the Focus on Core Tasks 

Lastly, investing in data privacy resources means that your IT, security, compliance, and legal personnel regain time needed to attend to other crucial tasks. Privacy is so often tacked onto somebody’s list of responsibilities; investing in automating solutions ensures your non-privacy professionals have more capacity to spend on their core tasks. 

For the CISO: Data Privacy Strengthens Your Security Posture 

Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) benefit from data privacy software by integrating privacy into their security strategy, which materially reduces risks and enhances organizational resilience.  

Know Your Data Risks 

When speaking with these stakeholders, reference how data privacy practices reduce the amount of sensitive, risky data your organization controls, thereby mitigating the impact of future data breaches. Furthermore, research suggests that businesses with stronger data privacy practices are inherently less likely to suffer a breach in the first place. This can be ascribed to the greater awareness over and insight into your organization’s data landscape enabled by activities like data mapping, subject rights request management, and privacy assessments. 

Get Privacy Off Your Plate 

By aligning data privacy with security, CISOs gain the benefit of returning their team’s focus to emerging threats and security. Sometimes, data privacy compliance can be a distraction that CISOs must attend to before they can focus on the threats that fall more directly under their purview.  

Ironically, paying more attention to data privacy can be the key to getting these tasks off the CISO’s plate. By investing in automated solutions and assigning a privacy professional or privacy-adjacent professional the job of maintaining compliance, they can reserve the bulk of their team’s focus on security and gain the ancillary security benefits that a data privacy program provides. 

For the Director of GRC: Data Privacy Provides Support and an Ally in Common  

Directors of Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) face many of the same challenges that privacy professionals face: both are seeking to advance their programs and secure business buy-in. Demonstrate that you can be allies to one another and showcase how much overlap there is between data privacy and GRC. 

Round Out Your GRC Strategy 

Data privacy solutions can be the missing piece in an otherwise holistic GRC program. Ideally, you'll have identified a data privacy solution that can integrate with other compliance processes already at play in your organization, which enhances collaboration and transparency and reduces friction.  

Know the “Why” Behind Your Data  

Facts privacy can provide the “why” behind GRC’s “what.” Robust data privacy management reduces the amount of data that you control and forces you to pin down the purpose behind the data that you do control. With that knowledge, Directors of GRC can confidently explain why the organization has taken on a certain level of risk, why controls for that risk are necessary, and for how long. 

For the CIO: Data Privacy Enables Efficiency, Insight, and Consolidation  

When it comes to Chief Information Officers (CIOs), data privacy is all about IT consolidation, efficiency, and cost reduction.  

No CIO likes the idea that teams are using systems outside of IT’s control. Privacy professionals share this distaste for unvetted and uncontrolled systems; once somebody’s personal information is transferred to a third party, it’s very hard to get it back. 

Find Hidden Data 

That’s why many data privacy solutions provide data mapping and privacy assessment functionality. These capabilities enable privacy and IT professionals to assess and map data in systems across the organization—even shadow IT systems that the CIO may not have sanctioned. Then, data privacy solutions enable you to assess whether these systems contain personal information, whether they have the right controls in place appropriate to the amount and nature of data they contain, and whether they transfer that data downstream to other systems. 

Reduce Redundancy and Promote Data Minimization 

The added benefit of this insight is that it reinforces efforts to identify redundant or deprecated systems still at use in the organization. This has the potential to reduce costs in the case of unneeded subscriptions and to improve efficiency by getting employees off siloed tools and onto the systems the rest of the organization relies on for its daily work. 

For the Head of Risk: Data Privacy Highlights Risk Factors 

Heads of Risk benefit from data privacy solutions by gaining a clear, comprehensive view of the organization’s data, its sensitivity, and how it's managed. Through data mapping, data privacy solutions provide visibility into systems and the nature of the data they contain.  

Gain Valuable Documentation 

On a more holistic level, data privacy programs generate deliverables that are invaluable to risk management frameworks, such as vendor and privacy impact assessments, privacy-by-design requirements, and, of course, data maps and inventories. 

Bolster Overall Risk Mitigation 

Clarify how data privacy programs not only help manage the risk of noncompliance with data privacy regulations, but they also mitigate risk associated with data throughout the organization. Data privacy solutions reduce the likelihood of costly incidents and support long-term risk mitigation goals, safeguarding the organization’s reputation and financial stability. 

More Ways to Make the Business Case for Data Privacy Resources 

The Osano platform has the potential to unlock all of these benefits for all of these different stakeholders; but even if you’ve got your heart set on Osano, there’s still the matter of demonstrating its value. 

In our eBook, Building the Business Case for Privacy, we provide insight into how Osano can benefit each of the stakeholders identified in this blog as well as tips on how to develop a project plan for implementing Osano and rebuttals to common objections you might hear from change-averse colleagues. 

Even if you’re still evaluating data privacy solutions, it’s an informative read that helps you think about how to make your case for more privacy resources. It can also shed light on what makes Osano different from other approaches or solutions and how Osano can bring value to your organization. 

Access your copy here!