GDPR-Compliant SaaS Development Checklist
If you serve EU users, GDPR compliance should be built into product delivery from day one, not patched later.
Product and Data Foundations
- Define lawful basis for each data flow.
- Map all personal data fields and processing purposes.
- Minimize data collection to necessary scope.
- Set retention windows with deletion policies.
Engineering Controls
- Encrypt data in transit and at rest.
- Enforce role-based access controls.
- Keep immutable audit logs for key actions.
- Use secure secret management and key rotation.
User Rights Workflows
- Data access request flow
- Data correction flow
- Data export flow
- Data deletion flow
- Consent withdrawal flow (where applicable)
Vendor and Infrastructure Controls
- Maintain Data Processing Agreements with vendors.
- Review sub-processor list and data residency.
- Confirm backup and restore controls.
- Validate incident response and breach notification process.
Release Gate Before Go-Live
- Privacy policy is published and linked.
- Terms and legal basis are documented.
- Logging and alerting are active.
- Access controls are validated in staging.
- Data subject request runbook is tested.
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