This is one way to grow a library: Earlier this week, OneTrust announced it had acquired DataGuidance, a privacy and security regulatory research platform housing guidance and case law information and a catalog of laws and frameworks.

The basic idea behind pairing the two platforms is simple. Users can gather the actionable intelligence they need to plot their compliance course from DataGuidance sources and use OneTrust tools to take action and monitor ongoing progress.

Last year, for example, OneTrust released a consent management platform in advance of the E.U.'s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) designed to streamline the process of collecting and validating consent.

According to Blake Brannon, vice president of product at OneTrust, integrating the entire scope of the compliance process under one roof is something that customers are very much interested in.

“It's really hard to kind of go into one tool and do the research and tag the information you want and save it and then try to log into another system,” Brannon said.

The acquisition was also motivated in part by the fact that the world at large has become increasingly fragmented in its approach to protecting consumer information. Navigating privacy regulations in a country like Australia could present different complications than, say, the forthcoming California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

Those laws can also be amended, challenged or supplemented daily, making it difficult for businesses attempting to comply—and those who make their bread and butter serving as a resource for businesses attempting to comply—to keep up.

The acquisition of DataGuidance adds some international ballast to OneTrust's operation as well. Per Brannon, DataGuidance comes with more than 500 privacy lawyers across 300 jurisdictions, boots on the ground that can help monitor sudden developments in global privacy regulations in real time.

“That kind of breadth of different insights, of different local representatives and those jurisdictions… really gives us a really robust framework to work off of to be able to keep the pace and kind of stay up to date with everything that is happening,” Brannon said.

To be sure, OneTrust is far from the only company that's made a niche for itself in the heavily-regulated world of privacy. In lead up to the GDPR, companies like TRUSTe developed assessment tools that could help guide a product towards compliance from the jump, while ZL Technologies and NetDocuments tweaked their platforms to evaluate where a set of data fell along that fine regulatory line.

Law firms too have gotten in on the fun. Ireland's McCann FitzGerald launched its GDPR Gap Analysis app in February 2018, while Parsons Behle Lab's GDPR IQ app distinguished itself by focusing on compliance as it applies to small and medium-sized companies as well as non-profits.