What is Data Mapping?

January 8, 2020

One way to help get into compliance with data privacy laws is to understand your company’s data collection process. This is done through data mapping.

Data mapping is discovering what data you collect, where it’s stored, with whom it’s shared, how long it’s retained and for what purposes it’s used. This requires a formal inventory of data ingress—such as customer registration, systems, fields within the systems and connections between systems. This data needs to be actively maintained as an organization grows and evolves.

A data map may contain:

  • Source(s) of data ingestion (a marketing form)
  • What data you are collecting (name, phone and email)
  • The purpose of the data (send relevant communication over email)
  • The handling of the data
  • The retention timeline of the data


Contact ALTA at 202-296-3671 or communications@alta.org.