Evaluating privacy risk before code goes to production
A Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) is a systematic process designed to identify and minimize the data protection risks of any new project, product architecture, or technology integration. Under both international frameworks and India's Significant Data Fiduciary obligations, conducting a DPIA is a formal regulatory requirement for high-risk processing.
Our 5-step DPIA framework
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1. Threshold Assessment
Screening the project against statutory high-risk indicators: large-scale profiling, automated decision-making, sensitive biometric or financial processing, or handling data of children.
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2. Systematic Description of Processing
Documenting data ingestion channels, third-party API dependencies, retention windows, and access permissions across engineering systems.
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3. Necessity and Proportionality Review
Evaluating whether the processing is strictly necessary to achieve the business objective, or whether less intrusive alternatives (data anonymisation, pseudonymisation) can achieve the same goal.
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4. Risk Identification and Assessment
Quantifying potential harms to individuals (unauthorized access, identity theft, algorithmic bias, loss of confidentiality) across likelihood and impact dimensions.
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5. Mitigation Roadmap & Sign-off
Formulating concrete architectural safeguards (differential privacy, tokenization, strict access limits) to reduce residual risk to an acceptable level.