CNIL:The open source PIA software helps to carry out data protection impact assesment

19/12/2017

The PIA software aims to help data controllers build and demonstrate compliance to the GDPR. The tools is available in French and in English. It facilitates carrying out a data protection impact assessment, which will become mandatory for some processing operations as of 25 May 2018. This tool also intends to ease the use of the PIA guides published by the CNIL.

Who can use the PIA software?

The tool is mainly addressed to data controllers who are slightly familiar with the PIA process. In this regard, a stand-alone version can be downloaded and easily launched on your computer.

It is also possible to use the tool on an organisation's servers in order to integrate it with other tools and systems already used in-house.

What is it?

The PIA tool has been designed around three principles:

  • A didactic interface to carry out PIAs: the tool relies on a user-friendly interface to allow for a simple management of your PIAs. It clearly unfolds the privacy impact assessment methodology step by step. Several visualisation tools offer ways to quickly understand the risks.
  • A legal and technical knowledge base: the tool includes the legal points ensuring the lawfulness of processing and the rights of the data subjects. It also has a contextual knowledge base, available along all the steps of the PIA, adapting the contents displayed. The data are extracted from the GDPR, the PIA guides and the Security Guide from the CNIL, to the aspect of the processing studied.
  • A modular tool: designed to help you build your compliance, you can customise the tool contents to your specific needs or business sector, for example by creating a PIA model that you can duplicate and use for a set of similar processing operations. Published under a free licence, it is possible to modify the source code of the tool in order to add features or include it into tools used in your organisation.