Good privacy management enhances trust in your brand in the eyes of your customers, it can help you stand heads and shoulders above the competition if you respect the rights of the individuals you serve by simply respecting their needs and expectations for privacy. This year’s theme for Privacy Awareness Week (PAW), Privacy: The Foundation of Trust, reminds us that privacy is a right, and we should always have trust in those who hold our personal information.
To build trust, you need to become transparent in the information you collect and have a clearly defined purpose for which it is needed. Not only does that ensure you only collect the absolute minimum needed to provide a product or service, you are demonstrating respect of that individual by not taking more than is necessary. This also restricts the consequences of harm to an individual if you are unlucky enough to suffer a data breach.
Regulations world-wide are changing for the better and giving ownership of personal data back to the individuals. They have a right to question how much you need, how long you keep it and who you give it to. Also, in light of some very significant data breaches that have caused harm to individuals, the onus is back on businesses to be open and transparent during a data breach so that individuals can be prepared and take necessary action to prevent further harm.
We built our services in a way that enables organisations to become better at being “open and transparent”, to build “trust” and to help businesses of all sizes build appropriate strategies to prevent and respond efficiently to a data breach.
Nobody likes to spend money on compliance, so don’t think of it as compliance. Ask yourself – If my information got breached and I could have a heads up, would I want to know? Of course, the answer is Yes.
Start caring about information you are merely custodians of because your customers trust you to do the right thing.
About the Author
Yvonne Sears MSc, LLM, CIPM, CISM, PCIP, MBCI
Yvonne’s experience quantifies her as having one of the most credible voices in Privacy anywhere in the world. The multi-discipline qualifications, certifications and experience held by Yvonne are overwhelmingly impressive and you would be hard pushed to find anyone as qualified across the globe.
Yvonne is a veteran of the Information Security, Risk/Governance & Business Continuity industries, and her passion is Privacy and Business Resilience, and has spent the last 22 years working in Government, Corporate and Private industry throughout the globe, the UK and Australia.
For recognition of her years of service, she has been awarded as an AISA Fellow and IAPP Fellow of Information Privacy.
Yvonne has been a major contributor on several trailblazing privacy projects some ongoing in Australia and in the UK. The outcomes from these projects have proven to be globally significant and the repercussions have paved the way on data sharing and privacy issues in sensitive and complex areas.