What/How Does Privacy Affect My Job?
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Change is constant in the technology sector, and professionals working in tech are continuously called on to integrate new processes and ways of thinking to stay abreast of their field. A case in point is privacy. If you entered the workforce a decade ago in any number of tech-related tracks, privacy and processes to protect may have been a topic of passing interest. But with the emergence of the GDPR, the CCPA, and other landmark pieces of legislation, privacy concerns have become a pivotal part of development space and beyond. This article provides a quick-hit synopsis of how different roles in technology organizations are impacted by renewed focus on user privacy in jurisdictions all over the world.

DevOps:

Teams must now incorporate privacy considerations into the development process while trying to balance ongoing pressures for speed and agility. The SANS institute suggests a number of best practices that DevOps teams can use to stay privacy compliant while working efficiently. Here are the most crucial:

  • Streamlined Access Control: Business processes and systems must ensure only authorized users can access sensitive information. Session management tools like tokens and timeouts should be used to protect against unwanted access.
  • Error Handling and logging: DevOps teams must store data logs securely and track all administrative activity, plus all inbound and outbound data processing activities.
  • Continuous Integration: DevOps teams should build authentication, password management and other security features into code, and incorporate automated security scanning into the delivery process.

UX:

The key principle that has emerged in the UX space is “privacy by design.” this principle was developed in the 1990s by Dr. Ann Cavoukian, and contains seven principles that set out the way that privacy features can be embedded into the very fabric of a software product. The framers of the GDPR had such regard for Dr. Cavoukian’s work that they made “privacy by design” a key tenet of their legislation. Below are the seven principles of privacy by design that UX professionals most now incorporate into their work:

  • Proactive not reactive: preventative not remedial
  • Privacy as the default setting
  • Privacy embedded into design
  • Full functionality: positive-sum, not zero-sum
  • End-to-end security: full lifecycle protection
  • Visibility and transparency: keep it open
  • Respect for user privacy: keep it user-centric

Product:

Product managers have more responsibility than most for ensuring that their organization heeds new privacy regulation. They’re ultimately responsible for product quality, and if that product is running in a non-compliant way, it’s in essence a defective product. Fortunately, product managers have resources across the organization to help ensure that they’re staying up-to-date with privacy reform. In her guide to GDPR mastery for Product Managers, Karen Cohen runs through a set of organizational processes that should be employed to protect from privacy violations:

  • Work closely with legal teams: it’s their responsibility to understand the regulations and how they might impact your product. It’s the product manager’s job to translate their opinions into actionable steps for different stakeholders in the business.
  • Research and Compare: domain knowledge is important. So is competitor research. How are other businesses in your sector handling information access requests? What do their opt-in and opt-outs look like on site? These are breadcrumbs your business can follow on a path to privacy success.
  • Establish clear ownership: If you have a big complicated product, it’s impossible for a single person to have granular privacy oversight throughout the system. That’s why it’s important for product managers to establish clear roles and areas of ownership, including a structure of command to help support the activities of the GDPR-mandated Data Protection Officer. Building this company infrastructure from scratch is undoubtedly a challenge, but in the long-term this purposeful delegation will beat ad-hoc process every time, and leave your business less vulnerable to breaches and violations.

This Article is Republished from our Privacy Magazine – To read more, visit Privacy.dev

A guide to CCPA, aka California Privacy Law
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A guide to CCPA, aka California Privacy Law

INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS THE CCPA?

The California Consumer Privacy Act will come into effect on January 1, 2020, and this fact may have a big impact on your business. California is the crown jewel in the United States economy – if it were a standalone country its $2.7 trillion GDP would be the fifth largest in the world, sitting ahead of the United Kingdom. This, combined with the state’s status as an incubator for tech innovation and consumer culture, gives it an outsized importance for all kinds of businesses operating at local, national, and multinational levels.

Put simply, any enterprise that reaches a certain scale will now be forced to contend with the CCPA, and it’s likely other states will soon follow suit with similar legislative pieces of their own- California has long been a bellwether for US-wide tech legislation. This article is a piece-by-piece examination of the CCPA and an analysis of its business impact, with particular attention given to the consequences for Small-to-Medium Enterprise (SME)’s data management, systems, and practices. By conclusion it should be clear that the CCPA is nothing to fear for management and development teams that are proactive and thoughtful in adapting to its prescriptions. For those that don’t use the appropriate amount of care, the consequences can be severe.

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GDPR Fully Explained
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GDPR Fully Explained

With the European Union’s passage of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the practice of data regulation moved out of its infancy. The GDPR is the first wide-reaching piece of unified data and privacy policy in the world, and as such, it is set to heavily influence a plethora of policies that are set to follow in its wake. But apart from the occasional headline about FAANG companies tussling with the new legislation, the practical impact of GDPR remains frustratingly obscure. If you’re a stakeholder in a small-to-medium enterprise (SME), this is a big problem. Unlike Google and Facebook, SME’s are unlikely to have a bottomless legal budget to contest being found in violation of the GDPR, and so for them, data compliance over the next five to ten years can easily become a question of business survival. This guide is a starting point for understanding the implications GDPR has for these businesses. We will examine the document, chapter by chapter, to summarize its content and analyze the practical consequences it holds for businesses that want to be compliant. Read on for a primer on all thing GDPR:

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Data Security: 4 Ways Your Team Can Do Better
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Data Security: 4 Ways Your Team Can Do Better

With all the breathless news coverage of high profile data breaches in recent years, one could be forgiven for thinking data heists are always the result of sophisticated efforts by devious hackers in far-off lands. But the reality is much more plain. According to a recent study by Securis, 25% of data breaches are caused by simple employee error. So if your team is spending all its time trying to anticipate black swan events, it can overlook the everyday safeguards necessary to keep its data secure in a fast moving business environment. In some jurisdictions such as Europe, the day-to-day management of an organization’s data security processes must be overseen by a designated Data Protection Officer. But whether you’re a large organization operating in GDPR territory, or an SME preparing for greater data regulation such as in the US with California Privacy Law (CCPA) in January 2020, below are 4 actionable steps your team can take to do the basics right:

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4 Key Considerations For Ethical, Compliant Data Processing
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4 Key Considerations For Ethical, Compliant Data Processing

If one were to chart the most important developments in the business landscape over the last 20 years, top of the list would surely be the growth of consumer data as a precious resource. Never before have companies had access to such powerful stores of business intelligence, and never before have they had such a pressing responsibility to manage that resource carefully. In 2019, data management is very commonly the difference between success and failure, and the disastrous consequences of mismanagement can impact both the company in question and the consumers that trusted the company to protect their information. Continue reading “4 Key Considerations For Ethical, Compliant Data Processing”

Preserving Privacy in the Age of Facial Recognition
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Preserving Privacy in the Age of Facial Recognition

Public anonymity is dead. While that phrase, “public anonymity” may sound like an oxymoron, let me explain: You can no longer walk along a street, visit a store, or attend an event without the possibility that someone — a government entity, a storeowner, or a tech giant — knows that youare there and can track everywhere else you’ve been, simply by your physical appearance.

In 2018, facial recognition technology spent a lot of time in the news. Between Amazon licensing their Rekognition product to law enforcement, the presence of gender and racial bias in some of the current technology, and China’s use of facial recognition to publicly shame jaywalkers, it’s clear that society is facing moral and philosophical questions about who owns and should have access to your physical identity and information in the real world? Continue reading “Preserving Privacy in the Age of Facial Recognition”

This Article is Republished from our Privacy Magazine – To learn more, visit Privacy.dev
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This Article is Republished from our Privacy Magazine – To learn more, visit Privacy.dev

Google and Facebook are dominating the online advertising market and have created an ecosystem with network effects difficult to break. As the tech giants accumulate user data their targeting becomes ever more refined and vain user impressions are reduced. Yet their business models build on foundational inefficiency, and give rise to the precarious externality of privacy invasion. Continue reading “This Article is Republished from our Privacy Magazine – To learn more, visit Privacy.dev”

The future of Data Privacy, or: The Business Model that Could Kill Online Advertising
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The future of Data Privacy, or: The Business Model that Could Kill Online Advertising

There’s a popular saying in Silicon Valley: If you can use a product for free, then you’re probably the product. Nowhere is this more truly illustrated than by the business models of Google and Facebook, two of the most valuable companies in the world and two of the most powerful vehicles for consumption in human history.

Google and Facebook scaled at unimaginable speed by offering their web services to users for free. As their user bases exploded, they monetized their platforms by building the most sophisticated ad targeting capabilities ever created – all on the back of data supplied willingly (so they claim) by their users. This brings us to the present day: the two companies combine to account for over 50% of digital advertising spend in the United States, to the tune of roughly $60 billion.

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If You Do Nothing Else to Be User Data Privacy Compliant, At Least Remember These 3 Things…
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If You Do Nothing Else to Be User Data Privacy Compliant, At Least Remember These 3 Things…

Just a few short years ago, the idea of User Data Privacy Compliance on the internet was as dubious as the idea of Miranda Rights in the Wild West. Back then the web was (and many would argue still largely is), an adolescent medium growing at supernova speed. Boundaries were only being discovered long after pioneers had traversed past them, and regarding personal data, the frontier mindset was prevalent: if you could catch it, you could keep it. But in recent years, this particular aspect of online exchange has finally begun to experience welcome regulation. Now there are real consequences for actors that fail to follow regulatory requirements in the collection, storage, and exploitation of personal data.

The GDPR in Europe is the most widely-known and powerful piece of data regulation, but it’s important to realize that many of its tenets are soon to be adopted, in one form or another, worldwide. In California, the CCPA will come into effect January 1, 2020. India is currently finalizing a far-reaching data privacy bill. In Brazil, the LGPD will become the law of the land some time in early 2020. For businesses all over the world, the need to be user data privacy compliant will only grow more important. So, let’s assume that you aren’t yet able to pore over the fine print of each piece of legislation to ensure you’re in compliance…what are some general steps you can take to protect your business from falling afoul of the regulator?

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Security & Privacy: Minimizing Breach Risk at the Source
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Security & Privacy: Minimizing Breach Risk at the Source

Thus far, we’ve spent a lot of time examining the core principles of the GDPR and other pieces of data regulation, and we’ve worked through some of the implications these documents carry for the UX and back-end functionality of consumer-facing applications. But there are, of course, many other components to your business’s robust, secure data operation. In this article, we’re going to look at core principles of making sure your hardware, software, and web applications are spec’d to better withstand attack. It’s no secret that threats to digital security are on the rise, and the consequences of a data breach can be – hello Equifax – a PR nightmare of epic proportions. Start with the steps below to get smart about your company’s infrastructure…

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