DPO as a Service &middot; NexoPrivacy

Why DPO as a Service

A statutory role - without the full-time price tag.

Under GDPR Article 37, Kenya's DPA (2019) and a growing list of regional laws, many organisations are legally required to designate a DPO. Hiring full-time is expensive; doing nothing is risky. Our retainer model gives you the named officer the law demands and the senior judgement your board needs.

Statutory cover

A named, qualified DPO registered with your supervisory authority (ODPC, ICO, CNIL, DPC and others) - meeting Article 37 and equivalent obligations from day one.

Cost-efficient

Full DPO function from a fraction of a senior salary. No recruitment cycle, no onboarding lag, no single point of failure.

Senior judgement

CIPP/E, CIPM and CIPT-certified practitioners who have built programmes for banks, fintechs, hospitals, SaaS scale-ups and public bodies.

No conflicts

An independent DPO without the conflicts of interest that come with internal roles in IT, security or legal.

Immediately operational

We bring playbooks, templates and a tested operating rhythm - you start producing evidence in the first month, not the sixth.

Cross-jurisdictional

One officer, multiple regimes: GDPR, UK GDPR, Kenya DPA, POPIA, LGPD, PIPL and more - mapped to a single control set.

What's included

Every duty a DPO is supposed to do - actually done.

Our retainers map directly to the tasks set out in GDPR Article 39 and the Kenya DPA. Nothing left in a slide deck; everything evidenced.

Regulator registration & liaison

Initial registration with your supervisory authority, ongoing point-of-contact, and full handling of investigations, audits and complaints.

DPIAs & risk advice

We run Data Protection Impact Assessments for new products, vendors and cross-border transfers - and brief project teams on lawful design choices before they ship.

RoPA, policies & notices

A living Record of Processing Activities, internal policies, privacy and cookie notices - reviewed quarterly, not annually.

Data-subject rights handling

DSAR, erasure and objection workflows: tooling, SLAs, response templates, and direct handling of escalations.

Breach & incident response

On-call breach support inside the 72-hour clock, including regulator notifications, communications drafts and post-incident lessons learned.

Vendor & DPA management

One vendor inventory, one DPA template set, one renewal calendar - kept current with new sub-processors and cross-border transfer mechanisms.

Training & awareness

Role-based privacy training for staff, board briefings, and bespoke sessions for engineering, marketing and customer-success teams.

Board & management reporting

A quarterly DPO report your board can actually act on - risks, decisions taken, regulator engagement and the metrics that matter.

How it works

From signature to evidenced compliance in 30 days.

We engineer the first month so you feel progress immediately - and the regulator sees a credible, named officer the moment paperwork goes in.

Discovery & baseline

A two-week deep dive: data flows, current state, gap analysis against your governing framework, and a prioritised 90-day plan with owners and dates.

Designation & registration

We register your designated DPO with the relevant supervisory authority, publish contact details, and announce internally.

Embed & operate

A standing rhythm: monthly programme reviews, quarterly board reports, on-demand advice and a shared workspace for live decisions.

Evolve

New laws, new products, new vendors, new regulators - the programme adapts continuously so you never start from zero again.

In-house vs. DPO as a Service

The honest comparison.

There's a time to hire full-time - and a time when a retainer is simply better. Here's how the options stack up.

In-house DPO

Deep institutional knowledge over time.
Full-time availability for one organisation.
$120k-$200k+ fully loaded annual cost.
3-6 month recruitment cycle to start.
Single point of failure on leave or attrition.

DPO as a Service Recommended for most

Named, registered officer of record - statutory cover from day one.
Operational inside 30 days, not 6 months.
40-70% lower total cost than a full-time hire.
A bench behind the named DPO - no leave gaps, no key-person risk.
Cross-jurisdictional fluency: EU, UK, Kenya, US and beyond.

Who it's for

Built for organisations where a DPO is required - or simply smart.

If any of the following describe you, designating a DPO is no longer optional - and outsourcing is almost always the faster, safer route.

Banks, fintechs & insurers

Regulated entities processing financial and special-category data at scale.

Healthcare & life sciences

Hospitals, providers, EHR vendors and pharma teams handling patient and trial data.

SaaS & technology

Scale-ups processing customer data across borders or selling into the EU and UK.

Government & non-profits

Public bodies, donor-funded programmes and NGOs handling citizen and beneficiary data.

Education & EdTech

Schools, universities and platforms processing minors' data and academic records.

Telecoms, ISPs & mobile

Operators subject to communications metadata, ePrivacy and lawful-access duties.

Common questions

Everything you wanted to ask before signing.

Still unclear? Speak to a DPO directly - usually a same-day reply.

Is an outsourced DPO actually allowed under GDPR and the Kenya DPA?

Yes. GDPR Article 37(6) explicitly allows the DPO to be a staff member or fulfil the tasks on the basis of a service contract. Kenya's DPA, the UK GDPR and most other modern privacy laws follow the same model. We become the named officer of record, registered with the relevant supervisory authority.

Who, specifically, will be our DPO?

You will be assigned a lead DPO - typically CIPP/E and CIPM certified, with sector experience that matches your business - backed by a bench of privacy counsel, technologists and incident-response specialists. You meet them before you sign.

How much does it cost?

Retainers start at a few thousand dollars per month for early-stage businesses and scale based on size, sector and number of jurisdictions. Most clients pay 40-70% less than a full-time DPO once recruitment, salary, benefits, training and tooling are accounted for.

What happens if we have a data breach at 2am?

Every retainer includes 24x7 incident-response cover inside the 72-hour notification clock. You get a privacy lawyer, an analyst and a communications lead on a single call - with regulator-notification drafts and customer-communications templates ready to file.

How do you handle conflicts of interest?

Your DPO is independent of your operational teams by design - they report into a governance committee (or directly to the board) and have no decision-making authority in IT, marketing or product. We document the reporting line in your designation letter.

Can you also act as our CISO?

Yes - many clients pair DPO as a Service with our virtual CISO retainer. Two named officers, one team, one operating rhythm. We make sure the roles stay independent where the law requires it.

What if we want to bring the role in-house later?

We design every engagement so you can. We document playbooks, decisions and tooling in your tenancy so an in-house successor can step in with no lift-and-shift. About a third of our clients eventually hire in-house - and we usually help them recruit.

A named Data Protection Officer, on tap.