How Applegreen runs global privacy with DataGuard

 Intro

Aleksandra Aytova: 

Of course it makes a difference because you have everything in one place and it's easy to be managed. You have one business relationship, you have the same point of contact, you have the same customer support team. It's more efficient, it's more comfortable from a customer perspective. 

 I'm Aleksandra Aytova.  I'm a PhD in Human Rights. I'm with a legal background. Recently, I graduated MIT in AI and Machine Learning. I joined at the beginning of this year Applegreen, as  their Group Head of Privacy, which means that I'm responsible for the privacy and the data protection in all the jurisdictions where Applegreen as a group is operating at the moment. And I'm having a great time because I adore my job.

What compliance challenges are you facing?

 The usual privacy challenge that you may have is the fast-developing legal environment that you need to follow up.

 The data retention periods, which are constantly changing because of some kind of legal requirements and you need to follow them. The data subject access requests, because they're becoming more and more interesting, because people now are using AI tools to generate their data subject access requests.

And sometimes those tools that they're using are hallucinating and actually are granting, different rights from the GDPR rights, actually rights that do not exist. 

How is DataGuard making your life easier?

 In this dynamic world, especially if you're a large-scale organization, it's very difficult to keep manual processes. At the beginning of my career, I was printing spreadsheets with records of processing activities, and I was sticking them to the windows of my office in order to see the data flow.

But nowadays, I don't think that I have the capacity to do that anymore, or I don't have time. Because, the day is only 24 hours. We hope that DataGuard is going to help us to achieve efficiency, to speed up our processes and to have a centralized system where we can update the constant changes which are happening to our records of processing activities, to our vendor risk management, third-party risk management,  to risk assessments, because as I said,  the environment, it's very dynamic. 

Why did you choose DataGuard?

Usually most of the vendors on the market at the moment are providing tools or modules or solutions which are not covering the full stack of the privacy-related tasks that you need to have automated. For example, in most of the cases, the cookies part is missing. So for us, that was very important. I mean, from a management perspective, this relationship with you to be easily manageable via one point of contact and to have the possible tools in one place. 

Which is your favourite feature?

From cookie consent and  the Privacy stack from the platform and the file keepers, which is very important for data retention periods, I think that the file keepers data retention periods is something unique that the other platforms and solutions in the market at the moment are not providing. But to be honest, as a personal preference, I really like how the cookie banner looks. I'm in love with it. 

What made DataGuard a good fit for Applegreen's needs?

The fact that, for three months, we are had meetings with different vendors and actually DataGuard met our criteria. The customer support is super important for us. The capabilities of the platform and the spectrum, which the platform is covering for us, was very important.

The super user-friendly interface, it's very important because intuitively you are able to navigate inside and it doesn't look like rocket science. It's very nice.

How did the data migration process go for you? 

The data migration process was a very interesting journey. We had all the help and support from your side in constant collaboration with the colleagues from our side.

That was what actually the other colleagues said for their migration: that it was very smooth, so I can confirm that it was very smooth.