Alternative to other providers: When data protection needs more than one module

Since the GDPR came into force on May 25, 2018, the market for data protection software in Germany has grown significantly. Providers such as another provider have specialised in mapping procedures, data protection impact assessments and requests for information and have been able to win well-known medium-sized and corporate customers in recent years. This layout makes sense for pure data protection departments. However, for medium-sized companies with 250 to 5,000 employees, for subsidiaries in the KRITIS sector and for organisations that fall under the NIS 2 directive, an isolated data protection tool is often no longer sufficient. In practice, the same people are responsible for the reporting lines for information security, compliance, whistleblower protection and occupational safety in such companies.

This article classifies another provider objectively and shows when an alternative is more economical. The comparison includes functional scope, role coverage, data residency, audit practices and the question of whether a provider can appoint external representatives in addition to the software. You will receive concrete criteria, a decision matrix, a migration roadmap and an overview of how CIVAC, as a compliance platform and officer-as-a-service, solves the same task in a workspace. 25 representative roles, 93 controls according to ISO/IEC 27001:2022, 490 audit templates and a preconfigured NIS 2 reporting path are already stored there. Reading does not provide advertising, but rather a basis for decision-making with verifiable paragraphs, deadlines and key figures.

another provider positions itself as a data protection management software. The scope of functions typically includes the processing directory in accordance with Art. 30 GDPR, the data protection impact assessment in accordance with Art. 35 GDPR, the processing of data subject inquiries in accordance with Art. 15 to 22 GDPR, the management of processor contracts in accordance with Art. 28 GDPR and a workflow for data breaches with a view to the 72-hour deadline in accordance with Art. 33 GDPR. There are also modules for training, audits of the processor and reporting to management. This is a useful tool for data protection departments with a clearly defined mandate. The software is usually licensed per client and integrates into HR and IT systems via interfaces.

The technical boundary begins where data protection merges with related obligations. A data breach ticket according to Art. 33 GDPR is often also a security incident according to Section 32 BSIG and triggers the 24-hour early warning and the 72-hour follow-up report of the NIS 2 guideline. Anyone who documents the data breach in another provider and the security incident in another tool risks conflicting timestamps and duplicate statements of facts. The same applies to risk analyses: A DPIA references technical and organisational measures that are anchored in the ISMS according to ISO/IEC 27001:2022. If these two worlds maintain separate master data, the maintenance effort is doubled and the risk of inconsistent action statuses increases from quarter to quarter. An alternative to a single-purpose tool is worthwhile when a company goes beyond pure data protection management and needs to combine the reporting lines from data protection, information security and compliance. More about the task profile in the profile of the external data protection officer, who represents exactly this interaction in one person. If you address this interlinking early on, you will save yourself expensive restructuring of the compliance tooling landscape later on and retain control over the reporting line.

The choice between a focused data protection software and an integrated compliance platform should be based on six criteria that can be derived from typical medium-sized business situations. First: the number of appointed representatives in the company. If you only need a data protection officer in accordance with Section 38 BDSG, you can live with special software. As soon as an information security officer, a compliance officer, an internal reporting office according to HinSchG and an occupational safety specialist according to Section 5 ASiG are also appointed, data redundancy and interface costs grow disproportionately because the same master data is maintained in four tools.

Secondly: the industry. KRITIS operators, energy suppliers, hospitals, water suppliers and financial service providers are subject to sector-specific obligations such as BSI Kritis Ordinance, KAIT, BAIT, MaRisk or DORA. Third: the data residency. Anyone who works with special categories of personal data in accordance with Art. 9 GDPR should ask in which jurisdiction the tool is hosted and which subservice providers it uses. Fourth: the audit practice. Audit templates and evidence should be exportable, versionable and audit-proof because in an emergency the auditor will not accept PowerPoint slides, but rather signed documents and time stamps. Fifth: the question of whether the provider also accepts external orders, for example if the internal person is unavailable or the professional suitability according to Section 5 BDSG is not consistently present. Sixth: the risk of fines according to NIS-2 of up to 10 million euros or 2 percent of group sales for essential facilities and 7 million euros or 1.4 percent for important facilities. Anyone who compares these six criteria against another provider and against a platform alternative will come to a reliable decision instead of a gut feeling about procurement. A written evaluation matrix with weighting is helpful, which serves as proof of the duty of care after the tool change.

The German compliance landscape has significantly more agent duties than a data protection tool can handle. In traditional medium-sized companies alone, six to twelve roles are regularly filled, depending on size and industry: data protection officer, information security officer, occupational safety specialist, fire protection officer, hazardous materials officer, whistleblower protection reporting centre, ESG officer, money laundering officer, supply chain officer according to LkSG, quality management officer, pollution control officer and, depending on the job profile, dangerous goods officer, incident officer, radiation protection officer or inclusion officer. Each of these roles has its own legal anchors, its own reporting obligations to management and its own audit trails.

If you licence your own tool for each role, you not only pay for multiple licences, but also generate structural follow-up costs. Separate reporting paths, separate escalation rules, separate master data states and separate audit trails are created. Risk information from the ISB tool only reaches the DPO via manual transfer, which delays the response time to an incident by hours. An integrated platform brings these roles together in one workspace, keeping POs, proof of suitability and reporting lines in one place and ensuring the same risk information is available across all roles. Others run compliance like a filing cabinet, a platform runs it like software. The appointment certificate, signed, filed, verifiable. In a comparison between another provider and a platform alternative, the role cover is therefore the largest lever for the total cost of ownership. For a pure data protection use case, another provider may be sufficient. As soon as management needs an overview of all representatives and their duties in a single view and has to explain this to the supervisory board or advisory board, a platform is the more economical answer. Details about the range of roles and the respective legal basis can be found in the Role overview, which also transparently shows the ordering obligations depending on the number of employees and industry.

The NIS 2 Directive was transposed into national law by the German NIS 2 Implementation and Cybersecurity Strengthening Act and affects around 29,500 companies in Germany. It requires a 24-hour early warning to the BSI and a 72-hour follow-up report with detailed facts and a final report within one month. At the same time, Art. 33 GDPR requires a report to the supervisory authority within 72 hours if personal data is affected, and Art. 34 GDPR requires notification to the data subjects under certain conditions. In most real incidents, both reporting channels have to be used at the same time, often with the same facts, but different recipients, different deadlines and different forms.

An isolated data protection tool can map the GDPR report well. However, it cannot control the parallel BSI reporting because it lacks the NIS 2 reporting path, the templates, the escalation rules and the integration with the ISB. In addition, ISO/IEC 27001:2022 serves as the central framework for the 93 controls of an information security management system. The DPIA uses the same measures as the ISMS, the security incident follows the same detection and response processes, and the inventory of processing activities overlaps with the asset inventory. Anyone who manages data protection, information security and compliance on one platform technically keeps the reporting line together: the deadline expires as soon as it is known, the workflow shows both reporting paths in parallel and sets up escalation rules so that no deadline expires. The auditor calls, the evidence is ready. This is exactly what an alternative does that does not see data protection as an island, but rather as an element of integrated risk management for regulated industries. Such an architecture reduces transfer errors between tools to zero and creates a consolidated audit view.

Data residency has been a top issue in data protection since the ECJ's Schrems II ruling on July 16, 2020. Anyone who processes personal data in the EU and wants to ensure that no US authorities can access it according to FISA Section 702 should check carefully when comparing tools: Where is the primary data centre? Who is the provider of the underlying cloud infrastructure? Which subservice providers are used and in which jurisdiction are they located? Which standard contractual clauses according to Art. 46 GDPR are deposited and which additional measures are applied, for example encryption with customer-side key management or tokenization of sensitive fields?

An alternative to a single-purpose tool should not present EU data residency as a marketing promise, but as a verifiable set-up. This includes a complete list of all sub-service providers with their location, role, security level and contract status, a documented transfer impact assessment for every third country reference and a list of procedures that makes the data flow in the platform itself traceable. In practical terms, this means: The platform must be able to show in an audit within minutes which client stores which data in which region, which backups are created at what frequency and which employees of the provider have access. CIVAC operates its workspace with EU data residency and discloses the subservice provider directory. This turns the comparison from promise to fact: audit-proof, documented, Art. 28-proof. Anyone who takes data residency seriously checks it before the contract is signed and not only when the supervisory authority asks or a major customer requests proof in a supplier audit. This practice later saves weeks of rework and avoids costly contract adjustments or even a forced tool change in the middle of the current financial year under time pressure and exploding costs.

Many medium-sized companies are looking for an alternative to a single-purpose tool not only because the software needs a broader range of functions, but also because they also want to hire the data protection officer externally. According to § 38 BDSG in conjunction with § 5 BDSG, the appointment of a DPO is mandatory for 20 or more employees with constant automated processing, in practice this is often the case as soon as special categories of personal data are processed or a data protection impact assessment is required. The appointment must be made in writing, the person must be professionally suitable and there must be no conflicts of interest. Anyone who fills the DSB internally must also ensure further professional development.

A classic tool provider only supplies the software. If you want to fill the DPO externally, you also look for a service provider, clarify proof of suitability and the appointment certificate separately and manage the reporting line via two contracts with two contact persons and two response times. An alternative that offers platform and staff in one model significantly reduces this interface. Licence the workspace for your internal representatives, or have our representatives order it. Both models use the same platform, templates, reporting line and escalation rules. The CIVAC SLA for orders is two business days instead of the industry standard two to six weeks. This has consequences for the comparison: The total cost of ownership of a tool-only model looks cheaper, but as soon as personnel costs, interface maintenance, representation regulations and audit defence are taken into account, the calculation tips in favor of the integrated model in many constellations. Officer-as-a-Service is therefore not an add-on, but rather its own comparison criterion that belongs in every tool selection. Anyone who leaves it out compares two different performance levels and comes to a methodologically questionable recommendation.

A tool change is organizationally tricky because audit traces and ongoing procedures cannot be removed. A sensible migration from the previous tool to a platform follows five steps that can be derived from dozens of real change projects. Step one is to take stock: Which processing activities, DPIAs, data breaches and processors are documented in the old system, in which version, with which release status? Step two is the export in a structured form, preferably machine-readable as JSON or CSV including all version statuses, comments and attachments.

Step three is the mapping phase: fields from the legacy system are mapped to the data objects on the platform, missing mandatory fields are added, and different taxonomies, for example for data categories or recipient groups, are harmonised. Step four is the parallel phase of four to eight weeks in which both systems are actively managed and new incidents are entered into both until the completeness of the migration is verified. Step five is the shutdown of the old system with documented confirmation of handover, archiving of the old database in an audit-proof format and a written order from the DSB or other representatives to the new system. It is important that the appointment certificate does not become obsolete when the technical environment changes. It refers to the person and the role, not the tool. CIVAC accompanies the migration with workspace onboarding and ensures that the ISMS, data protection documentation and reporting line change seamlessly to the new version. The inspector calls and the proof is ready, even on the first day after the change. This discipline determines whether a tool change remains an administrative act or becomes an audit risk.

The fine structure has become significantly harsher compared to classic data protection violations and should be taken into account in every settlement decision. Art. 83 GDPR provides for fines of up to 20 million euros or 4 percent of global annual turnover, whichever is higher. The NIS 2 Implementation Act adds fines of up to 10 million euros or 2 percent of group sales for essential facilities and up to 7 million euros or 1.4 percent for important facilities. Section 130 OWiG allows personal fines of up to 10 million euros against management who violate their supervisory obligations. In addition, there are civil law claims for damages in accordance with Art. 82 GDPR and, in the event of damage, the reputational consequences.

These three levers have a cumulative effect. Anyone who does not report a cyber-related data protection incident in a coordinated manner can be sanctioned at the same time under the GDPR, NIS-2 and OWiG. An isolated data protection tool reduces the risk in its area, but leaves the others open because it neither uses the NIS 2 reporting path nor documents the OWiG supervisory obligations of the management. An integrated platform delivers the escalation rules and deadline timers for all three legal regimes in a workflow and clearly documents who decided what, when, with what justification and on what data basis. In the audit, this traceability is the decisive lever for convincing a supervisory authority to reduce the fine, because according to Art. 83 Para. 2 GDPR, measures to reduce the risks must be explicitly taken into account in mitigating the punishment. Anyone looking for an alternative to a single-purpose tool should therefore ask themselves whether the target system shows fine risks from GDPR, NIS-2 and OWiG in a consolidated risk dashboard and whether it will stand up as evidence in court in the event of an incident.

The comparison between another provider and a platform alternative is based on three questions that every management should be able to answer before signing a licence. First: How many delegate roles does your company have to manage and are they currently synchronized or fragmented in separate tools, folders and mailboxes? Secondly: How is your data breach and security incident route structured, does it serve 24h, 72h and Art. 33 GDPR coordinated or separately, each with its own escalation rules? Third: Do you want to appoint the officers internally or have them appointed externally, and in what time frame, for example after the absence of an internal officer?

CIVAC answers these three questions as a compliance platform and officer-as-a-service. 25 representative roles are available in the workspace, 490 audit templates are ready for use, 93 controls according to ISO/IEC 27001:2022 are anchored, the NIS-2 reporting path is preconfigured with 24 and 72 hour deadlines, the directory of subservice providers is open, EU data residency is verifiable. Licence the workspace for your internal representatives, or have our representatives order it. Both models can be audited and multi-client capable in the same system. If you are working with other providers today and want to check whether a platform is more economical for you, it is worth having a 30-minute exploratory conversation. Turn reading into an assignment. A short message to info@civac.de or an entry in the contact form is sufficient for an initial assessment. Within five business days, you will receive a written comparison of your current licence, expected platform costs and officer options, including a migration roadmap with specific milestones. A comparison that not only looks at the list price, but also includes audit effort and personnel costs, is the basis for a truly reliable decision.