About Consent Management

Consent is at the heart of modern privacy compliance. In this article, we look at how to build robust consent frameworks for laws like GDPR and CCPA.

Overview

• What is Consent Management?
• Consent Management and the Law
• What Makes for a Great Consent Management Platform?
• Equip Your Company with Comprehensive Consent Management

What is Consent Management?

Consent and an effective consent management platform (CMP) are foundational to modern privacy compliance. For a growing number of privacy regulations worldwide, explicit consent from a user is needed to process their personal data.

Respecting Users’ Consent Rights

Consent might look like a simple yes/no question, but there are important nuances. If you process personal data for marketing and customer service, you need distinct consent questions for each of those use cases. Inform users of what these use cases mean for their data, in plain terms. Implement users’ consent choices so that your data flows reflect and respect users’ preferences.

What Does a Consent Management Platform do?

A consent management platform is a toolkit with two overarching objectives: properly requesting users’ consent and enforcing users’ preferences throughout data systems. An effective consent management platform is central to regulatory compliance and to building respect for users’ data.

Consent is a common thread throughout the world’s most prominent data privacy regulations. Article 6 of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) makes clear that, outside of circumstances like contractual necessity, data processing requires user consent.

Consent and the Law

What Do Privacy Laws Say About Consent?

Legal definitions of consent vary by law and jurisdiction. However, in the context of data privacy and data rights, similarities emerge across legal frameworks. Consent is an unambiguous affirmation from a user, given freely. A core component of consent is that it is informed consent. When presented with a request for consent, the user must understand what the request means.

When is Consent Necessary for Data Processing?

To process personal data, consent is often, but not always, required. GDPR establishes six legal reasons for personal data processing:

1. User consent for specific purposes
2. Contractual requirements involving the user
3. Legal obligations
4. Matters of life or death for the user
5. Public interest
6. Legitimate business interests

User consent is just one piece of the data processing puzzle. The other five legal bases apply to specific circumstances, but consent is often needed for user data processing.

Opt-In and Opt-Out Frameworks for Consent Collection

GDPR follows an opt-in approach to user consent. A business only satisfies consent requirements when the user opts into the processing. In contrast, CCPA and CDPA generally follow an opt-out approach: unless the user explicitly withholds their consent, data processing can proceed.

What Makes for a Great Consent Management Platform?

An Integrated Approach to Consent Management

Companies’ tech stacks engage more tools and apps than ever before, increasing the complexity of data flows. The right consent management tool will fit neatly into your tech stack and streamline downstream consent updates submitted by users.

A Seamless User Experience

To distill complex legal and technical requirements into plain terms, teams must prioritize clarity in the consent process for users. A consent management platform should clearly display the use cases with the option for users to further read the details of each activity.

Equip Your Company with Comprehensive Consent Management

Fides' consent management platform does the heavy lifting for you and your users. Mapping users’ consent preferences to specific data categories and use cases allows a user’s consent choice on your website to govern downstream data flows.

Championing User Consent

Fides empowers users and companies alike to make user consent accessible. The user can adjust their preferences at a Privacy Center interface your company customizes.

Delivering Transparency Through Consent Reports

With Fides’ consent reporting, your team will be ready for audits and regulatory requirements. Automatic reports update in real-time, documenting user consent activities and preferences.

Putting Consent Management into Practice

To learn more about implementing Fides’ consent management platform, book a demo and see how to best manage user consent.