A Glossary of Key Terms in Regulatory Compliance (GDPR, CCPA) and Data Privacy

In today’s data-driven world, understanding the intricacies of regulatory compliance and data privacy is no longer optional—it’s a critical component of responsible business operations, especially within HR and recruiting. For professionals managing sensitive candidate and employee information, navigating frameworks like GDPR and CCPA ensures trust, mitigates risk, and underpins ethical data handling. This glossary provides essential definitions for the key terms you need to know, offering clarity and practical context for automated HR and recruitment processes.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

The GDPR is a comprehensive data privacy and security law passed by the European Union in 2016 and implemented in 2018. It sets strict rules for how personal data of individuals within the EU and EEA is collected, processed, and stored, regardless of where the data processing takes place. For HR and recruiting professionals, GDPR mandates explicit consent for data collection, defines specific rights for data subjects (e.g., the right to access or erase data), and requires robust data security measures. Implementing automated workflows that capture consent, manage data retention policies, and facilitate data access requests is crucial for compliance, preventing significant fines and reputational damage.

California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)

The CCPA is a state statute intended to enhance privacy rights and consumer protection for residents of California, enacted in 2018 and effective in 2020. It grants California consumers specific rights regarding their personal information, including the right to know what data is collected, the right to delete personal information, and the right to opt-out of the sale of their personal information. Similar to GDPR, HR and recruiting teams dealing with California residents must ensure their data collection, storage, and processing practices comply, often necessitating automated systems to track consent, manage data deletion requests, and provide transparent data handling disclosures.

Data Privacy

Data privacy refers to an individual’s right to control who can access, use, and share their personal information. It’s about empowering individuals to make informed decisions about their data, ensuring it’s handled responsibly, ethically, and in accordance with their preferences and legal requirements. In HR and recruiting, this means safeguarding candidate resumes, employment histories, contact details, and other sensitive information from unauthorized access or misuse. Automation can enhance data privacy by enforcing access controls, encrypting sensitive data in transit and at rest, and anonymizing data where appropriate for analytics without revealing individual identities.

Data Security

Data security encompasses the measures taken to protect personal and organizational data from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, or destruction. While closely related to data privacy, security focuses on the technical and organizational safeguards (e.g., encryption, firewalls, access controls, secure cloud storage) to prevent breaches and maintain data integrity. For HR professionals, ensuring data security involves implementing secure applicant tracking systems (ATS), robust CRM backups, and training staff on best practices to protect sensitive employee and candidate records. Automated threat detection and regular security audits are vital components.

Personal Data

Under GDPR and CCPA, “personal data” refers to any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (data subject). This can include obvious identifiers like names, addresses, and national identification numbers, but also less obvious ones like IP addresses, online identifiers, or factors specific to a person’s physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural, or social identity. In recruiting, this includes everything from a candidate’s resume and cover letter to interview notes and background check results. Automated systems must be designed to classify and treat this data with appropriate privacy controls.

Sensitive Personal Data

Also known as “special categories of personal data” under GDPR, this refers to personal data that requires extra protection due to its potential for discrimination or harm. This includes information revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, genetic data, biometric data, health data, and data concerning a person’s sex life or sexual orientation. HR and recruiting teams must exercise extreme caution and often require explicit, specific consent when processing such data, ensuring automated systems are configured to handle these categories with heightened security and limited access.

Data Subject

A data subject is the identified or identifiable natural person to whom personal data relates. In the context of HR and recruiting, data subjects are typically job applicants, current employees, former employees, or even contractors whose personal information is collected and processed by an organization. Compliance regulations like GDPR and CCPA are primarily designed to protect the rights of these individuals concerning their data, giving them control over how their information is used. Automated candidate communication and self-service portals can empower data subjects to manage their preferences.

Data Controller

The data controller is the individual or legal entity (e.g., a company, organization, or public authority) that determines the purposes and means of processing personal data. Essentially, they decide *why* and *how* personal data will be used. In most HR and recruiting scenarios, the hiring company acts as the data controller for applicant and employee data. This role carries significant responsibility for compliance with privacy laws, including ensuring data processing is lawful, fair, and transparent, and that data subjects’ rights are upheld. Robust automation strategies help controllers manage these obligations effectively.

Data Processor

A data processor is an individual or entity that processes personal data on behalf of the data controller. This often includes third-party service providers like applicant tracking system (ATS) vendors, payroll providers, background check services, or cloud storage providers. Data processors must act only on the instructions of the data controller and are often subject to contractual agreements (Data Processing Agreements or DPAs) outlining their responsibilities regarding data security and privacy. HR departments must vet their data processors carefully and ensure automation tools are integrated securely with these third-party services.

Consent

In data privacy terms, consent means a freely given, specific, informed, and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her. For HR and recruiting, this is critical when collecting sensitive information or using data for purposes beyond direct application processing, such as talent pooling for future roles. Automated consent management systems can track and record explicit opt-ins, ensuring compliance and providing an auditable trail.

Right to Be Forgotten (Right to Erasure)

The Right to Be Forgotten, or Right to Erasure, is a data subject’s right to have their personal data deleted or removed under certain circumstances. These circumstances typically include when the data is no longer necessary for the purpose for which it was collected, or when the data subject withdraws consent and there’s no other legal basis for processing. HR and recruiting professionals must be prepared to honor these requests, which can be facilitated by automated data retention and deletion policies within an ATS or CRM, ensuring that candidate and employee data is permanently removed when legally required.

Right to Access

The Right to Access allows data subjects to obtain confirmation from a data controller as to whether their personal data is being processed, and if so, to gain access to that data along with supplementary information about its processing. This empowers individuals to understand what information an organization holds about them. For HR and recruiting, this means providing applicants and employees with a copy of their stored data upon request. Automated portals or streamlined processes can help organizations efficiently respond to these access requests, ensuring transparency and compliance.

Privacy by Design

Privacy by Design is an approach to system engineering that embeds privacy considerations into the entire design and operation of IT systems, networked infrastructure, and business practices, rather than treating privacy as an afterthought. It means proactively anticipating and preventing privacy risks. In HR tech, this involves designing applicant tracking systems, HRIS, and automation workflows from the ground up with data minimization, security, and data subject rights built in. For example, only collecting necessary data fields from candidates and using pseudonymization by default.

Data Protection Officer (DPO)

A Data Protection Officer (DPO) is an expert on data protection law and practices, appointed by an organization to inform and advise the company and its employees about their obligations under data protection regulations (like GDPR), and to monitor compliance. While not every organization requires a DPO, those that do play a crucial role in overseeing data privacy strategies, conducting impact assessments, and acting as a point of contact for supervisory authorities and data subjects. Their guidance is essential for HR teams developing and automating data handling procedures.

Data Breach

A data breach occurs when personal data is accidentally or unlawfully exposed, accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed. This can range from a cyberattack that compromises a database to an accidental email containing sensitive information sent to the wrong recipient. Regulations like GDPR and CCPA require organizations to report data breaches to relevant authorities and affected individuals within strict timelines if the breach poses a risk to the data subjects’ rights and freedoms. Robust data security, proactive monitoring, and a clear incident response plan (potentially involving automated alerts) are vital for HR to mitigate the impact of breaches.

If you would like to read more, we recommend this article: The Definitive Guide to Automated Keap CRM Data Protection & Instant Recovery