OneTrust adds GDPR consent tool to its suite of compliance products

As the May 25 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) deadline requiring entities to ask for and receive explicit user consent draws near, companies are grappling with how to comply. Just this month, IAB Europe released a proposed transparency and consent framework aimed at addressing confusion around these requirements.

With the release of its Universal Consent and Preference Management tool, privacy management company OneTrust believes it can help companies comply while using tools they already use.

“The Universal Consent and Preference Management tool essentially allows a company to store proof of consent in a central database,” CEO Kabir Barday told me, explaining that the tool makes accessing records of consent easy for both users exercising their data rights and regulators pursuing an audit.

“We capture and record anytime consent is given, we store that in the central database, and then we integrate with all the different internal tools that a customer might be using that need to reference that consent,” Barday said. “We maintain information for the customer about when and how the consent was received, what the user was told at the time of consent, and then we store it for regulators to be able to audit.”

“Anytime [a company is] emailing someone, or if they need consent to do a background check or do analytics on some user profiles — all of that may require consent in GDPR, and GDPR requires the company to be able to prove that they got consent,” Barday said.

Barday told me that the consent tool integrates into existing collection points, which include forms, mobile apps and paper forms; it collects and then generates a record of valid consent.

OneTrust was born of GDPR, forming three years ago to provide a variety of tools to help companies comply with the regulation. Its present suites of tools include features that facilitate recordkeeping, mapping data and gaining consent for using cookies.

Other companies, such as Jahia, have introduced similar tools, but digital policy advisor Kristina Podnar told me that OneTrust’s solution gets “closer to compliance because of its integration points.”