A Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) is a process that helps an organization identify and evaluate the potential privacy risks and impacts of a new or existing project, program, system, or service that involves the collection, use, disclosure, or retention of personal information. A PIA also helps an organization identify and implement appropriate measures to mitigate or eliminate those risks and impacts, and ensure compliance with applicable privacy laws, regulations, and standards. A PIA should be completed to effectively make changes that involve customer personal information, such as converting paper records into electronic form, uploading the records into a new third-party marketing tool, and merging the customer personal information in the marketing tool with information from other applications. A PIA can help an organization assess the necessity, proportionality, and legality of the proposed changes, as well as the potential privacy risks to the customers and the organization, such as unauthorized access, disclosure, modification, or loss of personal information, identity theft, fraud, reputational damage, or legal liability. A PIA can also help an organization implement appropriate measures to mitigate or eliminate those risks, such as data minimization, encryption, anonymization, pseudonymization, consent management, access control, security safeguards, contractual clauses, data protection impact assessments (DPIAs), data subject rights, breach notification procedures, and privacy policies.
[References:, CIPM Body of Knowledge (2021), Domain IV: Privacy Program Operational Life Cycle, Section C: Monitoring and Managing Program Performance Subsection 1: Privacy Impact Assessments1, CIPM Study Guide (2021), Chapter 9: Monitoring and Managing Program Performance Section 9.1: Privacy Impact Assessments2, CIPM Textbook (2019), Chapter 9: Monitoring and Managing Program Performance Section 9.1: Privacy Impact Assessments3, CIPM Practice Exam (2021), Question 1464, , ]
