Now that the dust has begun to settle from the UK’s Brexit referendum, I am seeing more and more measured articles discussing a number of vexing issues, including its impact on data protection legislation.
While I am not an EU attorney, I am a Chief Privacy Officer at a US based technology company and a privacy wonk, so I want to throw my unsolicited thoughts into the mix.
I cannot remember a time when privacy was as relevant as it is right now.
Across the EU and US, privacy has morphed from an abstract legalese concept to a kitchen table issue.
While enterprises are racing to deploy new tech that will drive revenue through uses of data, they must consider these latest technologies within the context of the EU’s new data protection law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Here are four key factors that businesses need to know about privacy in 2016:
If 2014 was the year of the data breach – as I predicted two years ago – then 2015 was the year that privacy and security simultaneously became both a kitchen table issue and a national policy issue.
In the US and EU we’ve seen breathtaking events that impact both.
This is a unique moment in the privacy and data protection world.
On October 6 the European Court of Justice – the highest court in the EU – judicially invalidated our most popular data transfer mechanism, the US Safe Harbor Program that allowed organisations to transfer personal data from the EU to US companies.
Today’s digital landscape is changing at breathtaking speed and is having a profound impact on the way we live our daily lives.
It’s hard to believe that online banking has only been around for a few years; and it’s almost quaint to think that I used to actually go to my bank to deposit a check.
Just last week, I lectured our plumber for not accepting credit cards on his phone. Don’t even get me started on my daily addiction to Uber.
Data collection is exploding across the internet, and for good reason. Whether you’re a Google, Facebook or small online advertising network, the more data you have the better.
You can slice it, dice it, repackage it, and – using predictive analysis – build accurate profiles to serve users with precise interest based adverts.
It drives down costs and the digital advertising industry, with their insatiable thirst for data, is booming. In just the first half of 2013, US revenue from online advertising in the US alone totalled approximately $20bn.
We know that we are addicted to our mobile devices and love that they enable us to purchase anytime, anywhere.
So chances are that one of your next purchases will be via your tablet or mobile phone.
But what does this mean for businesses operating in the mobile space?
As familiar names like HMV and Blockbuster disappear from the High Street, web traffic can be expected to grow as a result.
However, the increasing numbers of data aggregators and tracking tags being placed on websites are leading to slower loading pages, while advances in technology designed to save people time have made us less tolerant of waiting.
In 2006, the average web user expected pages to load in four seconds or less. By 2010, that expectation had become two seconds or less.
As the number of ad technology vendors grow and their functions expand, companies continue to implement more and more tags on their websites.
This process takes place in stages and incorporates various departments in the organisation, often without a central role governing their organisation.
This can result in a slower, less efficient, and more vulnerable website. Over the past five years, the average number of elements per page has doubled from 50 to over 100.
In an increasingly complex online advertising environment driven by analytics, ad delivery and site optimisation, how well are companies managing the many scripts and cookies found across their websites?