Rock the OneTrust Certified Privacy Pro Exam 2025 – Privacy Pros, Prepare to Shine!

The primary purpose of a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) is to identify risks associated with data processing activities. A DPIA helps organizations evaluate how processing personal data could impact individuals' privacy and rights, ensuring that potential risks are identified and addressed before any data processing begins. This proactive approach is essential for organizations to implement appropriate measures to safeguard personal data and to demonstrate accountability under data protection laws such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

While compliance with GDPR is important, it is not the sole focus of a DPIA; rather, it is one of the outcomes that can arise from the risk identification and management process that a DPIA entails. The DPIA does not aim to track personal data breaches directly, as its focus is on assessing risks in advance rather than documenting past incidents. Lastly, the goal is not to eliminate all data processing activities, as that would be impractical and counterproductive for many organizations. Instead, the DPIA seeks to ensure that data processing can be carried out in a manner that respects individuals' privacy and mitigates any identified risks.