What is a privacy impact assessment (PIA)?

What is a privacy impact assessment (PIA)?

• A. Evaluates how data processing affects privacy.
• B. Evaluates how data processing affects privacy and identifies mitigations to reduce risk.
• C. Only assesses data storage capacity.
• D. Only evaluates employee privacy at home.

Answer: (B)

A privacy impact assessment focuses on how data processing affects individuals’ privacy and what controls are needed to reduce those privacy risks. It looks beyond just describing what data is collected or processed; it asks how the data is used, who has access, where it flows, how it’s stored and retained, and what harms could arise to people’s privacy. The essential part is identifying concrete mitigations—such as data minimization, purpose limitation, access controls, encryption, pseudonymization, retention schedules, and governance practices—and outlining how to implement them before the project moves forward. This combination of assessing impact and mapping out risk-reducing measures is what makes the assessment effective and compliant with privacy requirements. Other options don’t capture the full scope: focusing only on privacy impact without proposing mitigations leaves risks unaddressed; focusing only on storage capacity ignores how processing other than storage can affect privacy; and limiting the scope to employee privacy at home misses the broader, organizational data processing context that a PIA is meant to evaluate.

A privacy impact assessment focuses on how data processing affects individuals’ privacy and what controls are needed to reduce those privacy risks. It looks beyond just describing what data is collected or processed; it asks how the data is used, who has access, where it flows, how it’s stored and retained, and what harms could arise to people’s privacy. The essential part is identifying concrete mitigations—such as data minimization, purpose limitation, access controls, encryption, pseudonymization, retention schedules, and governance practices—and outlining how to implement them before the project moves forward. This combination of assessing impact and mapping out risk-reducing measures is what makes the assessment effective and compliant with privacy requirements.

Other options don’t capture the full scope: focusing only on privacy impact without proposing mitigations leaves risks unaddressed; focusing only on storage capacity ignores how processing other than storage can affect privacy; and limiting the scope to employee privacy at home misses the broader, organizational data processing context that a PIA is meant to evaluate.