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GDPR Compliance

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the European Union's comprehensive data protection law. It requires organizations that process personal data of EU residents to demonstrate accountability, enforce data minimization, enable data subject rights, and report breaches within 72 hours. Qarion's governance platform provides the operational infrastructure to support these obligations across the data lifecycle.

Data Processing Inventories​

GDPR Article 30 requires organizations to maintain records of processing activities (ROPA). Qarion's Data Catalog serves as a living, continuously maintained register of all data assets across the organization. Each cataloged data product includes:

  • Ownership and stewardship — Every data asset has an assigned owner and optional stewards, establishing clear accountability for personal data processing activities.
  • Purpose and classification metadata — Rich metadata fields, tags, and documentation support the recording of processing purposes, legal bases, and data categories.
  • Source system lineage — Source system registration and lineage graphs make it straightforward to identify where personal data originates.

The catalog's full-text search and tagging system makes it easy to locate all assets that contain personal data, a prerequisite for responding to data subject requests and conducting data protection impact assessments.

Access Control and Data Minimization​

GDPR's data minimization principle (Article 5(1)(c)) and security obligations (Article 32) require that access to personal data is restricted to what is necessary. Qarion supports this through:

  • Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) — Fine-grained permission rules define which users and roles can access specific data products. Permissions are scoped by Space, ensuring multi-tenant isolation.
  • Self-service access requests — Users request access through a structured workflow rather than receiving blanket permissions. Each request is reviewed and approved by data owners or designated approvers.
  • Approval workflows — Configurable workflows enforce that access to sensitive data goes through appropriate review before being granted. Workflows can include multiple approval steps with role-based approver resolution.
  • Periodic access reviews — Governance meetings and recertification workflows support regular review of who has access to personal data and whether that access is still justified.

Right to Erasure Support​

When data subjects exercise their right to erasure (Article 17), organizations must identify and delete personal data across all systems. Qarion's Data Lineage provides:

  • End-to-end data flow visualization — Interactive lineage graphs show upstream sources and downstream dependencies for any data product, making it possible to trace where personal data flows.
  • Impact analysis — Before executing a deletion, lineage helps identify which downstream systems, reports, and consumers would be affected.
  • Column-level lineage — Where available, column-level granularity helps identify exactly which fields carry personal data through transformation pipelines.

Accountability and Documentation​

GDPR Article 5(2) establishes an overarching accountability principle: organizations must be able to demonstrate compliance. Qarion provides extensive documentation and audit capabilities:

  • Complete audit trails — Every access request, approval decision, and data change is logged with timestamps, actor attribution, and contextual metadata.
  • Governance meetings — Scheduled governance reviews with participant tracking, rich-text notes, action items, and attachments create a formal record of data protection governance activities.
  • Issue management — When data protection issues arise, the issue tracker provides structured incident documentation with resolution debriefs, root cause analysis, and impact assessment.
  • Data contracts — Formal agreements between data producers and consumers document the terms under which data is shared, including SLAs that support GDPR's purpose limitation requirements.

Breach Detection and Response​

GDPR Article 33 requires notification of breaches to supervisory authorities within 72 hours. Qarion helps organizations detect and respond quickly:

  • Smart Alerts Center — Centralized alert aggregation surfaces data quality anomalies, access violations, and other events that could indicate a breach.
  • Issue tracking workflows — When a potential breach is detected, structured issue management tracks the investigation, assigns responsibility, and documents remediation steps.
  • Workflow orchestration — Configurable notification workflows can automate the escalation process, ensuring the right people are notified immediately.

Quality of Personal Data​

GDPR Article 5(1)(d) requires that personal data is accurate and kept up to date. Qarion's Data Quality features support this:

  • Automated quality checks — Define and schedule validation rules that monitor accuracy, completeness, and consistency of personal data.
  • Trend dashboards — Track data quality scores over time to identify degradation before it causes compliance issues.
  • SLA monitoring — Set and track quality SLAs that ensure personal data meets defined accuracy thresholds.