Experts urged the organizations to be much more focused on data privacy issues this year, during the Spirion webinar panel. Companies have put their customers at risk for the last decade. By capturing more and more data for the insights to perform better in the competitive market. And in the struggle that they can better serve them with customized services and products.
The majority of consumers say they will no longer purchase anything from companies that involve security risks. They emphasize that they don't want to compromise on their data. They also believe that organizations should do much more to protect their personal information.
Spirion Panel Discussion
The Spirion panel began with the most popular reasons that have increased data privacy issues in recent years. One of the issues is the growth of data privacy legislation in the USA and across the world. That has expanded consumer rights, the increased usage of the internet and social media, and emergent technologies such as AI and facial recognition
Jennifer Mailander, deputy general counsel, data, privacy and cybersecurity, Fannie Mae said, “It’s an incredible time to be in privacy,”
Robert Eckman, CISO at Kent State University asked, “What rights are they giving that data subject as they are collecting it – are they informing them of its legitimate use?” According to him, the organization in 2021 must review their whole data collection process to ensure consumers “own” their privacy.
“This requires a fundamental switch in how businesses treat the data they possess,” Jason Hodgert, product marketing manager, Spirion commented. He also agreed with Robert stating that organizations must acknowledge that consumers own their own data, and they are merely “borrowing it,” which means taking extra care.
“When we’re dealing with digital transformation, often privacy and data protection are just forgotten." Rebecca Herold, CEO of The Privacy Professor, added. You’re focused on the digital transformation that you’re dealing with and then dealing with security and privacy later – you can’t do that.”
Covid-19 Pandemic
Due to the covid-19 Pandemic, most businesses have done digital transformation which increases the risk for the customers. The lack of privacy policy and security can affect customer information. Many of the consumers have faced the painful experience. Companies had compromised upon their online privacy.
The panelists also mentioned how this security solution can be a competitive edge over other companies in the industry. However, sometimes the protection of consumer information is stressful. Hodgert said: “People are going to be paying out a lot more notice to what’s getting accomplished with that info. It’s not sufficient that they know firms have it, they want to know who they are sharing it with and why.”
