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Threatsys

Security Consulting & Compliance

PDPL Compliance

Gulf-region personal data protection law readiness.

Every engagement includes manual validation, a two audience report and free re-testing.

Get a scoped quote+91 96682 00222

What this actually is

Personal Data Protection Laws across the Gulf, principally Saudi Arabia's PDPL and the UAE's federal law, matter to any organisation delivering into the region. We work across Doha, Dubai and the wider Gulf and see these obligations arrive through customer contracts as often as through regulators.

The common thread is data residency and cross border transfer. Several of these regimes restrict moving personal data out of the country without a specific basis, which changes architecture decisions rather than just policy ones. That is the part that costs money if discovered late.

We assess against the specific law that applies to you rather than a generic Gulf privacy checklist, because they differ on registration, transfer and breach notification in ways that matter.

What we go after

  • Determining which law applies and on what basis
  • Data residency requirements and where your data physically sits today
  • Cross border transfer conditions and the mechanisms available to you
  • Lawful basis and consent requirements as each law frames them
  • Data subject rights and the response timelines set locally
  • Registration or notification duties with the relevant authority
  • Breach notification thresholds and timing
  • Processor obligations flowing through your contracts

How we run it

  1. 01

    Gap assessment

    We measure you against the standard as it is actually audited, not as it reads on paper.

  2. 02

    Remediation plan

    Every gap gets an owner, an effort estimate and a date. You decide what lands this quarter.

  3. 03

    Implement and evidence

    We write the policy, build the control and collect the artefact that proves it is working.

  4. 04

    Internal audit

    A dry run under audit conditions, so nothing in the real one is a surprise.

  5. 05

    Certify and maintain

    We sit on your side of the table for the audit, then keep the evidence current between cycles.

What you receive

  • Applicability analysis naming the specific law and its trigger
  • Data residency assessment against current architecture
  • Gap report with remediation, separating architecture from paperwork
  • Transfer mechanism recommendation
  • Localised notice and consent wording
  • Evidence pack for regional customer due diligence

Who needs this

Organisations serving Gulf customers, and anyone bidding for government or regulated work in the region.

How long it takes

Three to five weeks depending on how many jurisdictions are involved.

Standards this satisfies

  • Saudi PDPL
  • UAE PDPL
  • Qatar PDPPL
  • GDPR
  • ISO 27701

Why it matters

Almost nobody starts a certification because they want one. It starts because a customer will not sign without it, a regulator has asked, or a deal is sitting still while procurement waits for evidence. The commercial driver is real and it is worth being honest that it, rather than security, is usually what pays for the programme.

The security benefit is real too, but it comes from a specific place: the discipline of having to evidence that a control operated over a period, rather than that it was configured once. That is the part that changes behaviour, and it is also the part organisations consistently underestimate.

Choose how you want this delivered

Most of the price difference between quotes comes down to this one choice, and it is rarely explained. Pick one to see what it covers, what it suits and what it costs you.

Gap assessment, then we work alongside your team through remediation, internal audit and the certification audit itself. Your people do the work and own the outcome, which is what makes the management system survive after we leave. This is what most organisations should choose.

Choose this when

  • You have a team who can absorb the work alongside their day job
  • You want the capability to remain in-house afterwards
  • First certification where documentation is the main gap

Effort and cost

Moderate. The calendar is longer than a managed programme because the work competes with everyone's existing responsibilities.

Scope it yourself, before you call anyone

Answer a few questions and you get an indicative number, the working behind it and what your answers tell us. It runs in your browser, so nothing you type reaches us.

1/5

Which framework are you going for?

What we look for, and keep finding

These are the classes of problem this work exists to surface. Not every engagement finds all of them, but these are the ones that turn up often enough to be worth naming.

  • Controls that exist on paper only

    The policy says quarterly access reviews. The evidence shows one, eighteen months ago, and it was not completed. This is the single most common audit finding across every framework.

  • Scope drawn too narrowly

    A certificate covering a subset of the business that customers assume covers all of it. Auditors check the boundary; buyers rarely do. Getting scope right is the most consequential early decision.

  • Evidence that cannot be reproduced

    A screenshot proves a control was configured on the day someone took it. A framework wants proof it operated throughout the period. Those are very different, and the gap only appears at the audit.

  • Exceptions with no expiry

    Risk accepted once, recorded, and never revisited. Over a few years these accumulate into an undocumented second control framework nobody is managing.

  • Third parties outside the boundary

    Processing carried out by a supplier who was assessed at onboarding and never since, while your obligation for their handling of your data continues regardless.

Who runs your engagement

A lead assessor who has sat on the other side of the table

Compliance work is led by an assessor who has taken organisations through certification, not by a consultant reading the standard for the first time with you. They know which findings a certification body will actually raise, which is a different list from what the standard technically says.

Questions we get asked

Do we have to host data inside the country?

It depends on the jurisdiction and the data. Some regimes restrict transfer rather than requiring local hosting outright, and several allow transfer where adequacy or specific safeguards exist. Establish this before you design the architecture, because retrofitting residency is expensive.

Our GDPR programme is mature. How much carries over?

A good deal of the machinery does: records of processing, rights handling, breach process. What does not carry over is residency, local registration duties and the specific transfer conditions. Those are the items that need genuinely new work.

Can you support us on the ground?

Yes. We have presence in Doha and Dubai and deliver across the region, so this does not have to be run entirely from India.

Which law applies if we serve several Gulf countries?

Potentially several at once. We map obligations across the countries you actually operate in and produce one control set that satisfies the strictest, rather than running a separate programme per country.

Often scoped alongside

Ready to scope your pdpl compliance?

Thirty minutes with a senior engineer, and you leave with a written scope and indicative effort.

Book a 30-min consultation+91 96682 00222