DSAR Support
Your DSAR is on the clock.
We handle it end-to-end.
Structured eDiscovery review, delivered within your statutory deadline. Audit-ready output. No internal resource drain.
Structured eDiscovery review, delivered within your statutory deadline. Audit-ready output. No internal resource drain.
The Problem
Employment-related DSARs, filed during grievances, disciplinaries, redundancy, or litigation, are the most complex and highest-risk. Without a structured eDiscovery capability, meeting the statutory deadline to a defensible standard is extremely difficult.
One calendar month, with limited extension. Without structured review capability, that deadline is almost impossible to meet defensibly. Late or incomplete responses invite ICO scrutiny.
Most in-house legal teams rely on HR and IT to handle review manually. No methodology, no privilege protocol, no QA framework. The exposure from inadvertent disclosure is significant.
Non-compliance carries enforcement risk. The ICO expects organisations to demonstrate a structured, defensible approach. An ad hoc process is no longer adequate protection.
Our Approach
Every engagement is structured around your statutory deadline from day one, with milestone reporting throughout. We work within your environment so your data never leaves your tenancy.
We scope the custodians and data sources, define search parameters, and collect the relevant dataset. Privilege is identified and swept at this stage, not left to QA.
Using Microsoft Purview eDiscovery Premium. Near-deduplication, email threading, and analytics reduce the dataset materially before manual review begins.
Items are coded against a defined tag taxonomy: relevance, privilege, exemptions. Your HR lead is looped in for context on escalations. Nothing is left to assumption.
Eight QA checks before export. You receive a clean disclosure pack with an accompanying exemptions log, structured for your response letter and audit-ready if challenged.
Why It Matters
If an ICO complaint follows a DSAR response, the organisation needs to demonstrate that its process was structured, documented, and applied consistently. A manual process managed under time pressure rarely produces that evidence.
The risk is not just regulatory. Employment-related DSARs are frequently filed as a tactic in litigation. The disclosure pack becomes part of the legal record. Errors in privilege handling or completeness of response can have consequences well beyond the ICO.
Data Privacy: Expanding the Partnership
Secure Step Forward's DSAR capability has been deployed as part of a long-term data privacy partnership, including for Colliers. The same structured methodology, applied at scale and under deadline pressure.
See the Colliers partnership →Options to Engage
Two engagement models depending on your volume and risk profile. Both structured around your statutory deadline.
Why Secure Step Forward
Most teams treat privilege as a final check. We define privilege parameters at the outset and apply them throughout. This materially reduces the risk of inadvertent disclosure and produces a cleaner privilege log.
We work within your Microsoft 365 environment using your own eDiscovery infrastructure. Data never leaves your tenancy, removing data transfer risk and maintaining your existing governance controls.
Near-deduplication, email threading, and analytics via Microsoft Purview eDiscovery Premium reduce the dataset materially before manual review begins. This makes deadline delivery realistic and cost predictable.
You know the cost before review begins. No time-and-materials billing uncertainty. The engagement is scoped, agreed, and delivered. Particularly important when matter volume or complexity is hard to predict at outset.
Common Questions
A Data Subject Access Request is a request by an individual to receive a copy of all personal data an organisation holds about them. Under UK GDPR, you have one calendar month from the date of the request to respond. The deadline can be extended by a further two months in complex cases, but the extension must be communicated to the requester within the original one-month window.
Employment-related DSARs are typically filed during grievances, disciplinaries, redundancy processes, or litigation. They involve large volumes of email and document data, complex privilege considerations, and significant legal risk if handled incorrectly. Most in-house legal teams do not have the eDiscovery infrastructure or capacity to manage them to a defensible standard within the statutory deadline.
Privilege is identified and swept at the scoping stage, not left to QA. We define privilege parameters at the outset based on the specific matter, apply a privilege tag protocol during review, and produce a privilege log as part of the disclosure pack. This significantly reduces the risk of inadvertent disclosure compared to processes that treat privilege as a final check.
All data handling is 100% within-tenant. We work within your Microsoft 365 environment using your own eDiscovery infrastructure, so data never leaves your tenancy. This removes data transfer risk and maintains your existing governance and security controls throughout the review process.
If volume is low but individual matters are complex or high-risk (employment disputes, litigation, senior staff), the ad hoc model gives you access to a structured capability without a standing commitment. If you receive DSARs regularly, or operate in a sector where volume is likely to increase, the standing capability model removes the setup delay that is most dangerous when the statutory clock is already running.
A scoping call takes 30 minutes. We will assess the matter, confirm the timeline, and give you a clear view of what structured review looks like for your specific situation.
Free Download
A structured overview of how we approach DSAR review engagements, including our four-stage methodology, QA framework, and engagement options. Enter your details below to download.