With consumers and customers beginning to realise how valuable their data is to companies and how that data can be misused, data privacy is becoming quite the hot topic.
From social media platforms to something as ubiquitous as Google, personal data is the product. And in 2022, conversations around the morality of seeing and treating the public as data points could have serious ramifications for the future ways we interact with the digital world.
Here are 5 data privacy trends transforming today’s landscape.
A cookieless future?
The value of first-party data is on the rise - and that means a future where third-party cookies constantly worming their way onto your browser could be unlikely.
Tech companies are pivoting to consensually bank your first part data and use it to attract advertisers with a specific audience.
This could lead to a win-win situation where users input their data in a more open and consent-based way and are rewarded with more relevant targeted ads (and a lack of those pesky ‘accept all cookies’ pop-ups.
US politics
We’re approaching election season in the United States, and a hot topic right now is the conversation around data privacy.
Speaking to EM360, Neil Jones, Director of Cybersecurity Evangelism at Egnyte, said: “Globally, privacy is now widely being treated as a human right; a fundamental human right.
“But in the US, it’s always been a commercial exchange. For example, I want to enter a contest so I’ll share my personal information to be able to do that. That’s actually changing now, as consumers are becoming a lot more aware of data aggregators and their methods. People are becoming aware that companies are recording their political affiliation, their martial status, their financial situation, and consumers are getting more concerned about that.”
AI Governance
One Gartner survey found that 2 in 5 organisations had an AI privacy breach, and only a quarter of those breaches was malicious.
Whether organisations process personal data through an AI-centred module or one managed by a team of in-house data scientists, the risks to privacy and the risk of personal data misuse is clear.
Privacy-centric visions at the highest level
Organisational and cultural change starts at the top. CISO’s and CDO’s have traditionally managed the approached to data collection and application, and these C-Level leaders must champion new policies and procedures to guide their teams through this tumultuous time.
Governing bodies will enforce more fines
Since GDPR was established in 2018, companies based in EU countries have paid roughly £250 million in fines for violating data protection policies.
In states like California, companies can be fined $7,500 per intentional violation and $2,500 per unintentional violation. As we reach a place where data protection is more ubiquitously understood and valued, these fines are only going to increase.