Training module
Privacy Risk & Impact Assessment (DPIA)
Assess privacy risks, reason about impacts, and document DPIAs within an ISO/IEC 27701-aligned PIMS
Are your DPIAs systematic and defensible?
Learn how to build a repeatable privacy risk and impact assessment process that makes assumptions transparent and aligns treatment and residual risk decisions.
Overview
What this module is about
ISO/IEC 27701 sets explicit requirements for privacy risk assessment and treatment within a PIMS and is no longer dependent on ISO/IEC 27001 certification. In practice, organisations struggle less with “doing a DPIA” than with making the assessment logic repeatable: consistent triggers, defensible impact reasoning, documented assumptions, and clear decision rights for residual risk.
This module focuses on DPIA logic as a management-system capability in a PIMS: structuring assessments, reasoning about impacts on individuals, linking outcomes to treatment decisions, and keeping assessments current as processing changes. It does not teach privacy fundamentals, scoping/role determination, operational privacy controls, or data subject rights execution; those are addressed in adjacent specialisation modules. It also does not re-teach generic risk methodology (scales, scoring models, risk appetite design), which is owned by Risk Management Foundations.
Audience
Who it is for
Management system implementers and coordinators
Executives and department heads accountable for management system performance
Those responsible for processes, policies, assets, risks and controls
Auditors seeking insight into management-side practice, not audit technique
Consultants working on management system design, governance or improvement
Decision supportIs this module for you?
It is a good fit if you…
need a repeatable DPIA logic rather than ad-hoc assessments.
want clear triggers, roles, and decision ownership for DPIAs.
need defensible impact reasoning for approval and acceptance decisions.
want DPIAs to stay current as processing and systems change.
support audit-ready, consistent DPIA governance in a PIMS.
It may not be the best fit if you…
are looking for privacy fundamentals or legal theory.
want a generic risk methodology or scoring model.
expect detailed guidance on technical privacy controls.
already run stable, well-embedded DPIA processes at scale.
What to bring
This module assumes participants already have:
Working understanding of core privacy concepts (PII, processing purposes, recipients, retention, lawful handling concepts)
Familiarity with how their organisation documents processing activities and changes (even if imperfect)
Basic management system literacy (roles, documented information, governance routines)
Agenda
What is taught
9 parts01Where privacy risk assessment sits in a PIMS
How privacy risk assessment provides decision-ready inputs for treatment, control selection, and justification, rather than acting as a parallel compliance exercise
02Assessment boundaries and inputs
How to define clear assessment boundaries based on maintained processing context, roles, and scope artefacts, and avoid generic checklists or opinion-based inputs
03Trigger logic: when a DPIA-style assessment is needed
How to recognise practical change triggers that require deeper assessment and apply proportional triage between lightweight reviews and full DPIA-style assessments with defensible rationale
04Defining the assessment unit
How to structure assessments around concrete processing activities, so responsibility and outcomes remain clear
05Impact reasoning focused on individuals
How to reason about impacts on rights and freedoms using severity, scale, reversibility, and vulnerability, while keeping assumptions explicit and evidence-based
06Likelihood reasoning in privacy terms
How to trace causal chains from processing design choices to exposure and harm pathways, using credible indicators and uncertainty notes instead of false numerical precision
07Treatment logic and residual risk decisions
How to link assessment outcomes to treatment options, document decision rationale, and handle residual risk acceptance through clear decision rights, escalation paths, and consultation triggers
08DPIA documentation pack and traceability
How to maintain a minimal, coherent DPIA record set that supports traceability from assessment through decisions to implementation evidence
09Technology as an enabler
How to use registers, workflows, versioning, and AI-assisted summaries to keep assessments current and connected to change signals while preserving human judgement
Outcomes
Learning outcomes
01
Explain how ISO/IEC 27701:2025 expects privacy risk assessment and treatment to function within a PIMS
02
Define DPIA trigger logic and proportionality rules that apply consistently across the organisation
03
Structure DPIA‑style assessments around real processing activities with shared services and suppliers
Apply a disciplined approach to impact reasoning on individuals and document assumptions transparently
Translate assessment outcomes into clear treatment decisions and residual risk acceptance criteria
Produce a maintainable DPIA documentation pack with traceability and review triggers so DPIAs stay current
Materials
The content and the assessment
Written module
The full content in writing, complete in itself. Videos are recorded for parts of it as an alternative way through, and the written module always carries everything.
Exercises
Graded work on the case organisation's own registers: structured answers checked against the encoded case, written answers scored against a rubric traced to it, with a trainer holding the final word on every assessed item.
On completion
The assessed exercises must be passed before the certificate is issued.
Scheduling
No public run of Privacy Risk & Impact Assessment (DPIA) is scheduled at the moment. Tell us you are interested and we will let you know when the next one opens, or discuss running it in-house.
Module facts
- Module ID
- HAM-DP-S-02
- Discipline
- Data Protection
- Part of tracks
- Management System Manager
Case organisation
All modules share one company
Each module enters the company at a particular point in its history and finds it as that history has left it.
Northstar Integrated Services AG is a group headquartered in Zurich, operating in six European countries, with about 1,350 employees at the end of 2025. It provides digital operations platforms and managed operational services to regulated organisations in healthcare, the public sector and industrial services. Founded in 2008 as a field-operations firm serving business customers, it had about twenty-five employees when its first regulated customer, a hospital group, required documented decisions, named accountability and evidence on request. It moved into the platform business in 2016 and in 2024 acquired an operating business in Poland and the Czech Republic, whose legal entity continues inside the group.
Linked registers
Organisation and people, roles, risks, objectives, policies, documents and records, communications, findings, audits and reviews, interested parties, processes
Records, not summaries
The evidence sits in the registers and documents where a real organisation would keep it.
A history
The company has a timeline from 2008, so a structure can be examined before and after it changed.
More than one legal entity
A Swiss parent company and an acquired subsidiary in Poland and the Czech Republic, with customers in several jurisdictions
Why it matters
Judgement develops on material that is incomplete and partly contradictory, as it is in practice. Northstar is built that way on purpose. Because modules enter its history at different points, a governance structure can be seen while it is built, when it is outgrown and when it is rebuilt.
Delivery & dates
How this module reaches you
Delivered live online, combining conceptual framing, discussion, case work and direct interaction with the trainer. In-house and contextualised delivery is available on request.
No public run is scheduled at the moment. Most modules run on request as well as on the public calendar, so tell us the timing you need.
Want this module scheduled?
We will tell you when the next run is scheduled, or run this module in-house with your own case material.
Not sure it is the right module?
Describe your context in a short message and we will tell you honestly.