If you’re reading this, you care about data privacy. Maybe you care about it in the scope of your job responsibilities, or perhaps you care about it personally: in the scope of your own personal life and technology use. But more likely than not, it’s a mix of the two. This is why automation of privacy efforts – and PrivacyOps -- matters. Curious? Read on.
The cultural zeitgeist of data privacy awareness
We didn’t get here by accident. Governments around the world have not enacted data-centric regulations such as GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) out of the pure goodness of their hearts. These laws are largely in response to growing public and awareness and outcry over-exploitation of sensitive personal information: personal information that individuals feel they often have little choice in providing or controlling if they are to participate in modern society. Pick your favorite headline about a breach or data privacy violation; data privacy awareness is high and growing.
The research done by 451 Research also corroborates this. In one of our consumer survey cycles, we asked individuals how concerned they were about data privacy. A full 90% reported they were either “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned.” Only 1% reported they were “not at all concerned.”
That type of awareness is hard to ignore, and in the US, individual states are rapidly enacting legislation for data privacy and protection: following in the footsteps of California. But for businesses looking to comply with these regulations, the landscape is treacherous. Not only does California’s law – CCPA – have extraterritorial reach, but all of the individual state proposals for laws are slightly different, leading to a balkanization of data privacy and protection standards in the US. Interstate organizations in the US, then, cannot sustainably approach each new regulation with an ad hoc “Whack-a-Mole” approach. They need privacy programs that are adaptable, scalable, and that leverage automation to execute data management tasks common to multiple regulatory frameworks.