You need someone in charge of data privacy. Your investors keep asking about it while your enterprise customers send security questionnaires that read like bar exam essay prompts. Meanwhile, you know that your business collects the kind of data nobody wants to see in a headline. Still, a full-time privacy executive is a big hire, and the work may not fill forty hours a week. Yet.
Enter the fractional Data Protection Officer (DPO), an experienced privacy professional who serves as your organization's privacy lead on a part-time or retained basis. The GDPR expressly allows the DPO to be a staff member or to fulfil the role on the basis of a service contract. U.S. law sometimes calls this role a Data Protection Officer, but regardless of what you call it, the job still has to get done. HIPAA, for example, requires covered entities and business associates to designate a privacy official responsible for privacy policies and procedures.
So what does a fractional DPO actually do? Read on for five core jobs, and learn why they matter even more in the industries where a privacy mistake costs the most.
Job No. 1: They Find Your Data
Before anyone can protect your data, someone has to know where it is.
Most growing companies can't quickly answer three basic questions: What personal data do we collect? Where does it live? Who else touches it? A fractional DPO starts by building a data map, sometimes called a data inventory or, under the GDPR, a record of processing activities. That map follows each type of data from collection to deletion: the intake form, the CRM, the analytics dashboard, the backup server, and the vendors, including those who promised to delete data and didn’t.
Everything else depends on this map. You can't write an accurate privacy notice, honor a deletion request, or scope a breach without it. Importantly, when an investor or acquirer asks for one in due diligence, a missing or outdated data map tells them more about your company than you may think. Companies who don’t know what they have or where it is can’t manage their risk. Savvy investors know that unmanaged risk equals a negotiation advantage.
Job No. 2: They Turn Law Into Operations
Privacy laws don't implement themselves. Someone has to integrate the law into what your team actually does every day.
In most cases, privacy obligations follow your users, not your headquarters. If you serve customers in multiple states or countries, you may answer to a growing patchwork of state privacy laws, sector-specific rules, and foreign regimes all at once. A fractional DPO figures out which ones apply, then builds the machinery of compliance, including privacy notices, consent flows, retention schedules, procedures for handling access and deletion requests, and internal policies your staff can follow without a law degree.
Just as important, they keep your promises and your practices in sync. The FTC has repeatedly gone after companies whose data practices didn't match what they told users, including GoodRx and BetterHelp in 2023. A privacy policy that was accurate at launch can become a liability the day your product team adds a new feature. If you don’t know who’s keeping track of your policies, most likely, no one is.
Job No. 3: They Keep an Eye on Your Vendors
Your vendors' data practices are your data practices, whether you like it or not.
Every SaaS tool, payment processor, marketing platform, and contractor that touches personal data extends your risk. A fractional DPO reviews vendors before you sign, not after you get their breach notice. That means vetting security practices, negotiating data processing agreements and business associate agreements, and making sure the contract actually limits what the vendor can do with your data.
The quietest vendor risk often lives on your own website. Tracking pixels and software development kits can send user data to advertising platforms without anyone on your team deciding to share it. That was at the heart of the GoodRx and BetterHelp matters, and it has fueled a wave of litigation against healthcare providers. A good DPO knows to look under the hood of your website and app, not just your contracts.
Job No. 4: They Get You Ready for Your Worst Day
Something will go wrong eventually. The question is whether you've practiced for it.
A fractional DPO runs risk assessments before you launch new features, adopt AI tools, or start using data in new ways. The GDPR requires a data protection impact assessment for high-risk processing, and several U.S. state laws now require similar assessments for activities like processing sensitive data or targeted advertising. These assessments catch problems while they're still cheap to fix.
They also build your incident response plan and help you rehearse it. Notification clocks start fast: the GDPR generally expects notice to regulators within 72 hours of becoming aware of a breach, and HIPAA requires notice to affected individuals without unreasonable delay and no later than 60 days after discovery. State breach laws add their own timelines and content requirements. When the clock is running, you want a plan that's already been tested, not a scramble to figure out who to call.
Job No. 5: They Answer the Hard Questions
When regulators, customers, or investors come asking, someone needs to have the answers and the receipts.
A DPO is your privacy point of contact. Under the GDPR, individuals may contact the DPO about how their data is handled, and the DPO cooperates with supervisory authorities. In practice, a fractional DPO also fields the security questionnaire from your biggest prospective customer, the diligence request list from your next investor, and the uncomfortable question from your board.
They also train your people. Most privacy failures start with a well-meaning employee: the marketer who uploads a customer list to a new tool, or the front-desk staffer who emails a spreadsheet to the wrong address. Because a fractional DPO sits slightly outside your day-to-day chain of command, they can give leadership the candid read an employee might hesitate to give, and show a regulator or investor that someone independent is making sure that you’re compliant. Who do you want on the phone with a regulator after a data breach, or explaining a response policy to your board? A dedicated privacy professional keeps your company’s profitability in separate hands from your customer’s well-being.
High Risk, High Reward: How It Works in Regulated Industries
Those five jobs apply to any business. But in some industries, the data is more sensitive, the rules are more tangled, and a single mistake can follow you for years. Here's how the fractional DPO role plays out in some sectors where the stakes are highest.
Healthcare
HIPAA requires covered entities and business associates to designate both a privacy official and a security official. A fractional DPO can fill or support those roles, manage business associate agreements, and keep policies current. But the bigger risk is often what HIPAA doesn't cover. Patient-facing websites, scheduling tools, and apps can create exposure under consumer protection and state health data laws, and records related to substance use disorder treatment may carry extra protections under 42 CFR Part 2. A good DPO maps where HIPAA ends and everything else begins.
Psychedelics
Few industries handle data this personal: mental health history, trauma, drug use, and what someone said during one of the most vulnerable experiences of their life. Add the fact that most psychedelics remain federally controlled substances, and data about who used them can carry legal risk for the very people you serve. A fractional DPO helps psychedelic businesses collect only what they need, comply with state program rules in places like Oregon, New Mexico, and Colorado, and design apps and AI-powered tools that protect users before, during, and after treatment. For ketamine clinics, those preparing for the launch of FDA-approved psychedelic medicines, and research partners, a DPO helps you layer HIPAA and research requirements on top.
Cannabis
Dispensaries collect more than most customers realize: ID scans, purchase histories, medical card numbers, and loyalty and text-message marketing data. Some of that flows into state seed-to-sale tracking systems, and all of it documents conduct that remains illegal under federal law. A fractional DPO helps cannabis operators reconcile state regulatory reporting with privacy obligations, vet the point-of-sale and tracking vendors that hold customer data, and keep marketing programs on the right side of consent rules.
Consumer Wellness
Wellness brands often assume that because they aren't healthcare providers, health privacy rules don't apply. That assumption is getting expensive. The FTC's Health Breach Notification Rule reaches many health apps outside HIPAA, and Washington's My Health My Data Act regulates consumer health data broadly and includes a private right of action. Other states have followed with their own consumer health data rules. A fractional DPO helps wellness companies (wearables, supplements, fitness, sleep, and fertility apps among them) understand when their data counts as health data, and treat it that way.
Hospitality
Hotels, restaurants, and retreats collect payment cards, passport details, loyalty program data, and sometimes employee biometrics. Payment data brings PCI DSS obligations. California's privacy regulations require a notice of financial incentive for many loyalty programs. And biometric timeclocks have created major exposure under Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act. High staff turnover makes training a constant job, and franchise and management structures make it unclear who owns the data. A fractional DPO brings order to that chaos by . For psychedelic retreats, which sit squarely at the intersection of hospitality and health, that clarity is especially valuable.
The Bottom Line
A fractional DPO isn't a discount version of privacy compliance. It's privacy leadership sized to where your business is right now, with the experience to see around the corners you haven't reached yet. For companies in high-risk industries, that experience is the difference between a privacy program that exists on paper and one that holds up when a regulator, a plaintiff, or an investor starts asking questions.
This post is for general informational purposes only and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.
Ready to find out what a fractional DPO could do for your organization? Contact Victoria J. Cvitanovic, Esq., CIPP-US, AIGP by booking a consultation at https://www.rudicklawgroup.com/.
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