The Data Protection Preventive Assessment (DP-PA): Proposal for a New Instrument in Data Protection Law. Practitioners’ Corner

Scientific research may be associated with the circumstance that the processing of personal data is not anticipated but cannot be completely ruled out either.However,the EU’s currentlegalframework does not enable unanticipated processing of personal data in a legally certain way. Therefore, the framework can be hindering to important research, eg in the field of cybersecurity, which itself is closely related to the protection of data subjects because it aims to ensure the security of the IT software and tools with which in turn personal data might be processed. Against this background, a research project has proposed to introduce a new instrument, the Data Protection Preventive Assessment (DP-PA), which is intended to enable unanticipated personal data processing in a legally compliant and legally certain manner. The proposed instrument is presented in this report as well as its possible integration into the GDPR.