OneTrust Acquires IAPP's Privacy Core eLearning Solution

OneTrust, a data privacy platform vendor, announced in a press release on Nov. 20, 2019, its acquisition of the International Association of Privacy Professionals’ (IAPP) Privacy Core eLearning solution, a first-of-its-kind data privacy training series for non-privacy professionals. 

The IAPP is a nonprofit membership organization for privacy professionals offering certification programs, training, research, publications, distribution chat lists, conferences, and other resources for privacy teams. (Note, this analyst is an IAPP member. Read my recent review of the IAPP Privacy. Security. Risk. 2019 conference.)

OneTrust is a comprehensive data privacy platform offering privacy program management, research, data subject access request (DSAR) functionality, data breach notification tools, privacy impact assessment (PIA) functions, consent management, and much more.   

The acquisition of the IAPP's Privacy Core eLearning solution will allow OneTrust to offer its 4,000-plus customers comprehensive eLearning tools, enabling the education of non-privacy professionals on privacy protection basics and how to comply with legal regulations like the GDPR, CCPA, and other laws. Existing IAPP Privacy Core eLearning customers will now be serviced by OneTrust, per the IAPP’s press release on the acquisition. 

"The IAPP has invested significantly in developing the market-leading Privacy Core eLearning solution over the last four years," Trevor Hughes, IAPP president and CEO, said. "The transition of Privacy Core allows the IAPP to reinvest resources in our offerings tailored specifically for the privacy professional, and to focus on our not-for-profit mission, which is to define, support, and improve the privacy profession globally."

Regarding the acquisition, OneTrust CEO Kabir Barday said that “OneTrust customers continue to ask us to be the complete solution for their privacy, security, and third-party risk program needs. As a result, we have seen an overwhelming demand in the market to add an eLearning offering to our portfolio.”

OneTrust’s announcement comes at a time when we are seeing more acquisition activity in the data privacy market. Earlier this week, TrustArc announced its acquisition of data privacy platform competitor Nymity. We will see further concentration is this explosive software market, as data privacy legislation requires companies to comply with myriad regulations across the globe.