Consent is a key component of both privacy ethics and regulatory compliance, and consent management is equally crucial—that is, obtaining, managing, and documenting the consent of individuals for the collection, use, and sharing of their personal information. When your organization collects data from data subjects, does it ask for consent to do so in a clear, unambiguous, and nonforceful manner?
Organizations need to consider the nature of consent management requirements as per their governing law, such as whether consent must be opt-in, opt-out, include specific language or consent controls, and so on. You’ll also need to consider how to operationalize data subject consent preferences, how to prove and record consent preferences without violating privacy, and additional factors.
Effective consent management must have policies and procedures in place for obtaining consent,
operationalizing that consent (i.e., turning data trackers on or off, blocking or permitting data sharing, etc.), documenting consent, and reversing consent preferences when it is revoked.
With an immature consent management process, an organization may only meet some or none of these requirements. For example, visitors may indicate they don’t consent to data collection on your website, only for some data trackers—but not all—to be blocked. Or consent may be asked for in a misleading manner, such as by requiring additional clicks to opt out of data collection rather than opt-in.
A mature consent management process involves clear, transparent, and user-friendly procedures for obtaining, documenting, and managing consent. This includes providing visitors with clear and understandable information about the purposes and scope of data collection, using plain language, and providing accessible options for opting in or out. Privacy professionals should regularly review and update their consent management process to ensure it functions correctly, remains compliant with governing laws, and reflects the data processing activities at their organization.
Important factors to consider in consent management include the scope and sensitivity of personal information collected, the jurisdictional requirements for consent, and the potential risks to individuals if their consent is not properly managed.
Effective consent management requires a degree of technical operationalization that privacy professionals may find difficult to accomplish on their own. To make this task easier, privacy professionals should: