Data Privacy

The evolving focus on data privacy and protection by regulators, businesses and consumers is the next wave of the Data Revolution. Businesses on the cutting edge of data collection and usage are starting to realize that they will not be able to continue their existing business model without improving the privacy protections that they offer to consumers.

Regulators both in the European Union and the United States have made it clear that businesses must evolve. The European Union adopted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which they will start enforcing after May 25, 2016. The United States Congress is currently considering three different pieces of legislation to regulate privacy on websites and mobile applications between the U.S. House and Senate, including the BROWSER Act, the CONSENT Act, and the Social Media Privacy and Consumer Rights Act.

The need to use a Data Privacy as a Service solution is three-fold. First, GDPR created a race for organizations to hire Data Protection Officers with the experience necessary to lead their privacy program and comply with the terms of Article 37 of the GDPR. Second, even if an organization can find the right personnel internally to build a privacy program, automated data collection, processing and sharing is simply happening at too fast a pace for a manual process to work. As a result, a more automated technology process such as Data-Privacy-as-a-Service is needed.

Finally, the latest surveys on the subject indicate that only a minority of online users trust businesses in order to protect their privacy. By bringing in an outside organization to improve privacy protections including transparency and consumer controls, businesses should be able to separate themselves from these concerns and gain more trust for users into their privacy practices.