Digital-native businesses carry the heaviest PDPL exposure of any sector

Technology companies and telecommunications operators are among the most data-intensive organisations subject to the PDPL. Whether you run a SaaS platform, a mobile network, a digital marketplace, or a cloud infrastructure business, you are collecting, processing, and transferring personal data at a scale and speed that creates significant PDPL exposure. SDAIA has been clear that digital-native businesses are not exempt from the law's full force, and enforcement since September 2024 has made proactive compliance a commercial as well as regulatory necessity.

Key challenges

  • Massive volumes of user data - account information, usage logs, location data, and behavioural profiles, processed continuously across systems with limited privacy governance oversight
  • Subscription and usage-based consent models that do not meet PDPL's lawful basis requirements, particularly where data is shared with advertisers or analytics partners
  • Cloud-hosted infrastructure and SaaS architectures creating cross-border data flows to international data centres and third-party processors without SDAIA-recognised transfer mechanisms
  • Telecom operators holding communications metadata, call records, and location data that attract the PDPL's most stringent sensitive data obligations
  • Rapid product development cycles that routinely introduce new data processing activities without any DPIA process or privacy-by-design review

How RSM Can Help

We deliver a technology and telecom-calibrated PDPL gap assessment across your product, infrastructure, and vendor ecosystem, mapping personal data flows from user onboarding through to third-party data sharing and cross-border transfers. We build consent management frameworks suited to your platform architecture, develop privacy notices and data processing agreements for your partner and advertiser network, and embed DPIA workflows into your product development and vendor onboarding processes. Our DPO as a Service provides designated SDAIA contact, ongoing compliance monitoring, user DSAR management, and 72-hour breach notification, giving your engineering and product teams a clear compliance boundary to build within, without creating friction in your release cycles.