Privacy friendly settings and policies for Frontend Observability

Manage operational aspects of Frontend Observability including service level objectives, access control, and data privacy. These settings enable you to align frontend monitoring with organizational requirements, security policies, and compliance standards.

Configure Grafana for privacy-first analytics to support CNIL requirements with Frontend Observability

France’s data protection authority, the CNIL (Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés), has clarified the conditions under which audience measurement and analytics tools can operate without requiring explicit user consent. These rules, grounded in Article 82 of the French Data Protection Act, are particularly relevant for organizations delivering digital services to users in France. This consent exemption applies only in narrow cases where analytics are strictly limited to measuring site or app performance and audience, without enabling tracking, profiling, or data sharing.

While this guidance creates opportunities to simplify user experience, it also raises the bar for how analytics data is collected, processed, and governed. Combined with GDPR obligations, CNIL expectations introduce additional nuance that teams must account for when designing their observability and analytics strategies. CNIL guidance raises expectations around transparency, data minimization, and control.

This post provides practical guidance on how to configure Grafana Frontend Observability to support CNIL-aligned privacy practices. This isn’t legal advice or a guarantee of compliance—organizations should always consult their legal teams and refer to official CNIL guidance.

Recap: CNIL Expectations

The CNIL allows certain analytics use cases to operate without consent if strict criteria are met. To qualify for consent exemption—or more broadly align with CNIL expectations—analytics implementations should follow principles such as:

Limited purpose: strictly audience measurement and service improvement
Single-site scope: no cross-site or cross-app tracking
Short-lived identifiers: limited session or cookie duration
No personal data collection without consent
No data sharing with third parties
Aggregation and anonymization wherever possible
User transparency and control

Many of these requirements are configuration decisions—not just tool selection.

Configure Frontend Observability for CNIL-aligned use

Grafana Frontend Observability, powered by the Faro Web SDK, is designed to give teams control over what data is collected and how it’s processed.

To learn more, refer to CNIL compliance.

Available settings and policies

Configure the following settings and policies:

Service level objectives

Define and track performance targets for your frontend applications using Frontend Observability signals. Create SLOs based on metrics like Time to First Byte (TTFB), error rates, and Web Vitals to ensure your applications meet performance standards.

To learn more, refer to Create SLOs.

Role-based access control

Control who can view, edit, and manage Frontend Observability applications using role-based access control (RBAC). Assign appropriate permissions to team members based on their responsibilities.

To learn more, refer to Role-based access control.

Data privacy

Configure Frontend Observability to comply with your organization’s data privacy requirements. Understand what data is collected, how to prevent collection of personally identifiable information, and manage session storage.

To learn more, refer to Data privacy.