Challenge

Continuous Data Deletion Drained Bandwidth for Value-Creating Work

The Atlantic has a lean but highly capable data team that manages a growing set of core responsibilities. From supporting editorial insights to managing privacy and compliance obligations, they act as the first line of defense across The Atlantic’s entire data footprint.

Of these core responsibilities, manually executing data deletion requests commanded a significant amount of the team’s limited time. Between querying and removing records from internal data warehouses and coordinating deletions with third-party vendors, the team would spend hours weekly on this task alone.

As data deletion requests rose, Aline Rollenhagen, Executive Director of Data, knew her team needed a better way to locate, classify, and expunge personally identifiable information (PII) across The Atlantic’s internal systems. The cost of doing nothing was clear: wasted engineering time, rising query costs, and mounting operational friction. While Aline briefly considered building an in-house solution, the upfront time investment and perpetual maintenance made this path unfeasible.

After evaluating several potential privacy partners, Aline discovered Teleskope. Upon learning how the platform covered the entire data deletion lifecycle, from PII detection and classification to internal deletions and third-party vendor integrations, she couldn’t wait to get started.

“Our data team was spending a significant amount of time executing deletions, which took them away from other valuable work. We needed a solution that would streamline our data security workflows at scale.”

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Solution

End-to-End Data Deletion Workflows With Minimal Internal Lift

The Teleskope team worked closely with Aline to ensure the implementation was swift and seamless. Support was fast, hands-on, and responsive with regular Slack communications and syncs to keep progress on track.

With Teleskope’s AI-powered data discovery, Aline’s team instantly identifies and categorizes all sensitive information across The Atlantic’s cloud, on-premises data stores, and third-party sub-processors. After enrolling all relevant PII datasets into Teleskope, Aline’s team now handles deletion requests efficiently. Teleskope automatically scans those datasets, identifies whether the user exists in them, and enforces deletion accordingly, all without requiring manual intervention. This precision eliminates the need for blanket deletes and has significantly reduced query costs.

“Before, executing a single deletion request was inefficient,” Aline explains. “Now, Teleskope only queries what’s necessary; it’s more precise, faster, and cheaper.”

Beyond internal data deletion, Teleskope also streamlined coordination with third-party vendors. For instance, when The Atlantic switched to a new subscription management system — a platform for which no out-of-the-box connector existed — Teleskope’s team built a custom integration on day one. This dedication to interoperability enabled the data team to automatically include vendor-side deletions in their workflows, ensuring full compliance without the need for manual outreach or brittle internal scripts.

With accurate PII detection, targeted queries, and integrated third-party workflows, the team no longer had to stitch together tools, which required them to spend additional time manually double-checking that all data had been deleted. Most importantly, this gave Aline’s team back hours of bandwidth each week, time they could now allocate to other value-creating initiatives such as tracking KPIs and stakeholder communication.

“We were in the middle of a major migration to a new subscription system, and Teleskope didn’t have a connector for it yet. We flagged it during onboarding, and they just built one from scratch. No delays, no back-and-forth. It felt like working with an extension of our own team.”

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Results

Enhanced Data Security, Reduced Manual Work, and More Bandwidth for Value-Creating Tasks

Teleskope transformed The Atlantic’s data deletion process into a unified, low-maintenance workflow. What once required hours of engineering time is now streamlined, scalable, and auditable from end to end, delivering measurable gains in speed, cost, and control.

• 95% reduction in time spent on data deletions by the data team
• 100% data visibility across internal and third-party systems
• 97% reduction in cost per data deletion

Today, Teleskope plays a central role in The Atlantic’s data privacy strategy. Moving forward, Aline’s goal is to eliminate the last manual step in the deletion process: entering user information to initiate a request. With Teleskope’s API, she sees a clear path to fully automating the workflow, allowing deletions to be triggered directly from upstream systems without any human involvement.

“We’ve thought about going even further, using Teleskope to remove the need for any human involvement at all. We’re eager to work with Teleskope to push our internal efficiencies even further.”