A system or process for collecting, recording, and managing individuals' consent for their personal data to be collected, used, or shared.
Consent management ensures that organizations can demonstrate they have obtained valid consent from individuals before using their data for specific purposes. It involves capturing consent at the point of collection, storing a record of what was consented to and when, and providing mechanisms for individuals to withdraw consent.
Under PIPEDA, consent must be meaningful — individuals must understand what they are consenting to. Under GDPR, consent must be freely given, specific, informed, and unambiguous. Consent management systems help organizations meet these requirements at scale.
Example: A health app asks users to consent to three separate uses of their data: providing the service, improving the app, and sharing anonymized data with researchers. The consent management system records each user's choices, timestamps them, and allows users to change their preferences at any time. If a user withdraws consent for research sharing, the system flags their data to be excluded from future research exports.
This is educational information, not legal advice.