Data protection management All-in-One

Innsbrucker Kommunalbetriebe AG is a provider of smart energy and infrastructural solutions and employs approximately 670 employees. There are 19 organisational units within IKB AG alone. A huge volume of personal data is processed within the company, starting from HR Payroll to individual service departments, right through to IKB as an Internet Service Provider. “The greatest challenge was the structural complexity within the company”, said Philipp Amann. By working together with another employee and a contact person in each of the IKB AG departments, the central Data Protection Officer managed to develop a DSMS (data protection management system) in just a few months. As a result of historical developments, Amann was therefore confronted with a huge variety of data recording and processing software in use. The first step involved obtaining a precise overview – in other words, capturing the big picture.

IKB sought an holistic system to record and document its processing activities and technical and organisational measures, to archive data protection-related contracts and to fulfil its disclosure duties for audits in a simple manner using its know-how and workflows. “There are lots of different providers operating within the market, but nobody was able to offer us a product that gave us everything we were looking for. The exception to this was Akarion”, explained the Data Protection Officer.

AKARION and IKB shared a common vision right from the beginning, confirmed Mr Amann. Another reason for opting for the Compliance Cloud was the vision for the future. “Fantastic levels of transparency will be achieved in future thanks to the self-service disclosure option for data subjects, which has been designed for the long term.

“In my 20 years of implementing IT security products, Akarion has been one of the few partners to really listen to what the customer actually wants”, said Amann when talking about their collaboration. „Akarion has a really open approach, is focused on providing solutions and is really agile”, added the IT specialist. Mr Amann felt as though he had been understood right from the very beginning, and was happy to become part of a user group working on the “Roadmap” – the future functionality of the AKARION Compliance Cloud.

IKB really benefits within its Group structure from the scalability of the software solutions. The data protection management software was rolled out in all Group subsidiaries in 2019. In addition to a library featuring all of the processing activities as a common baseline, the individual companies are also provided with other models and objects, which can be adapted really easily to cater for specific requirements.

Mr Amann was relaxed about implementing this in the individual companies: “Training for the Compliance Cloud takes just 60 minutes. The software is constantly being developed further, including in situations whether there are relevant Supreme Court or ECJ judgments to cater for.” The Compliance Cloud's functional extent offers much more than just ensuring GDPR compliance. Further added value beyond GDPR capability is provided by the fact that the Compliance Cloud will also improve the quality of data within the company by detecting any duplicates in future.

“Having the directory containing all of the processing activities at the touch of a button is an unbeatable option”, replied Amann when asked about the benefits from the Compliance Cloud. Another key benefit for him is the meticulous nature of the software, resulting in significant amounts of time being saved. At the beginning, he regarded the visualisation of data flows within the company as an option that is “nice to have”. However, the real value of this feature quickly became evident in the reporting to management. Division Managers and Management Boards were therefore able to obtain a comprehensive overview of the various data processing activities within the entire company