Oman’s PDPL Execution Plan with TurtleShield: Six Steps to your Compliance Journey

The Sultanate of Oman has taken a significant step in strengthening personal data protection with the enactment of Royal Decree 6/2022, promulgating the Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL), and Ministerial Decision No. 2024/34, issuing the Executive Regulation for its implementation. For organizations handling personal data, particularly financial institutions, tech firms, and multinational companies, understanding and operationalizing this law is critical for compliance and trust.

Here’s a practical execution plan to navigate Oman’s PDPL requirements effectively.

1. Conduct Risk Assessments: PIA, DPIA, and TIA

Organizations must perform risk assessments on personal data processing activities:

• Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) – Evaluate privacy risks in new or existing processes.
• Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) – Assess potential impacts on personal data subjects before implementing new systems or processes.
• Transfer Impact Assessment (TIA) – Evaluate compliance with data sharing rules when transferring personal data outside Oman.

These assessments help identify applications and business processes handling PII and ensure compliance with cross-border data transfer regulations.

Law: Article 13, 18 & 23

Regulation: Article 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 23, 26, 37, 38 & 39

Ardent Solution: The TurtleShield PA (Privacy Automation) automates and streamlines privacy-related processes and tasks. Conducting DPIAs and TIAs enhances privacy practices, ensures Oman's PDPL compliance with applicable privacy laws, and also protects sensitive information.

2. Discover and Map Personal Data

Understanding what data you hold is foundational to compliance. Organizations should:

• Perform data discovery and mapping to locate all personal data assets.
• Build a Data Bill of Materials (DBoM) and Record of Processing Activities (RoPA) to document processing activities and ownership of personal data.
• Conduct regular audits and reviews to evaluate compliance and update records.

Law: Article 17

Regulation: Article 23, 27, 28 & 29

Ardent Solution: Our Innovative and patented technology "TurtleShield DD (Data Discovery)" addresses these challenges by discovering hard-to-find datasets at scale, enabling quick actions, and reducing compliance costs. It locates and categorizes data based on regulatory requirements in Oman's PDPL, ensuring companies maintain compliance, secure sensitive information, and minimize data breach risks.

3. Implement Personal Data Subject Rights Management

Oman’s PDPL empowers personal data subjects with rights over their data. Organizations must establish:

• Secure portals for personal data subjects to exercise rights such as revoking consent, obtaining copies of processed data, and requesting corrections or deletion.
• Internal workflows for privacy teams to manage and fulfill requests efficiently.

Law: Article 10 & 11

Ardent Solution: TurtleShield DSAR streamlines the Data Subject Access Request (DSAR) process, ensuring efficient compliance with Oman's PDPL. It offers a centralized portal for intake, automated data discovery, and secure response delivery.

4. Establish Centralized Consent Management

Consent management is a core requirement of PDPL compliance. Organizations should:

• Build a centralized system for collecting, storing, and managing consent, including guardian consent where applicable.
• Include privacy notice and preference management to manage marketing consents digitally.

Law: Article 6, 11, 14 & 22

Regulation: Article 4, 11, 12, 13, 15, 21 & 22

Ardent Solution: TurtleShield CM (Consent Management) automates required user privacy notices, the gathering and management of consent/opt-out privacy preferences, and the operational honoring of preferences by both internal and downstream third-party data sharers.

5. Enforce Storage Limitation Requirements

Organizations must regularly review the personal data they hold and erase or anonymize it when it is no longer required. This practice reduces risk and supports data minimization principles.

Regulation: Article 27

Ardent Solution: TurtleShield DM (Data Minimization) helps you reduce the data and focus on enterprise-centric data. It can provide you detailed insights to get rid of non-essential data, reducing cost of security and storage and building confidence of business owners and data custodians.

6. Implement Data Disclosure and Breach Management

To handle data breaches effectively and meet regulatory timelines, organizations should:

• Automate breach detection and response workflows, ensuring timely internal and external notifications.
• Notify the Competent Department within 72 hours of discovering a breach that risks the rights of personal data subjects.
• Notify affected data subjects within 72 hours if the breach may result in serious harm or high risk.

Law: Article 19

Regulation: Article 30 & 33

Ardent Solution: TurtleShield DBM (Data Breach Management) module helps organizations efficiently verify, assess, contain, manage and respond to data breaches including notifying affected individuals and regulatory bodies as per the legal requirements. TurtleShield DBM streamlines data breach management process, handles stakeholder management, accelerates breach response, enabling organizations to notify regulators and stakeholders within the required timeframe.

Follow PDPL Timelines:

• Notify the Competent Department: Within 72 hours after becoming aware of the breach by the Controller if it poses a risk to the rights of the personal data subjects
• Notify Personal Data Subject: Within 72 hours after becoming aware of the breach by Controller if such breach would result in serious harm or high risks to the personal data subject
• Personal Data Subject Request Response Deadline: The controller must respond to the request within a maximum period of (45) forty-five days from the date of receiving the request
• Decision on Request: Within 45 days from the date of receiving the request
• External Auditor Report to Competent Department: 60 days from the date of the appointment of the external auditor

Conclusion

Oman’s Personal Data Protection Law sets clear expectations for how organizations must handle personal data. By implementing structured risk assessments, mapping and auditing data, managing consent, enforcing storage limits, and automating breach response, organizations not only ensure regulatory compliance but also strengthen trust with customers and stakeholders. A proactive approach to PDPL compliance transforms data protection from a legal obligation into a strategic advantage, enhancing operational efficiency, reducing risk, and positioning your organization as a leader in privacy governance.