Privacy Professionals & Regulatory Headaches with Adam Stone

Jul 13, 2022

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Adam Stone, Chief Privacy Officer at TrustMAPP, brings his decades of security and privacy knowledge to the Ranch this week to talk about the disciplines of security and privacy. Where do they intersect? What makes security professionals and privacy professionals different? And, maybe most important of all: How can these two disciplines work together within an organization without being perceived as useless regulatory headaches?

Timecoded Guide:

[00:00] Comparing and contrasting security and privacy responsibilities

[08:30] Privacy, GRC, and building trust with stakeholders

[15:28] Coordinated and cooperative efforts of security and privacy teams

[20:57] Security awareness training vs the lack of awareness of privacy

[27:26] Drawing the line with privacy laws for security professionals

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Where do privacy and security intersect? Where don’t they intersect?

Privacy professionals need the security professionals within their organization to make privacy work and implement a certain protocol within a privacy policy. Although each group may want to draw division, there needs to be a healthy and divided dose of both privacy and security within a company, and they cannot just be handled by one person tagged in for both. The main reason this shared responsibility of privacy and security under one roof doesn’t work is the differences in priorities. While Adam points out that both seek to serve stakeholders, security professionals are protecting property with technology and privacy professionals are protecting individuals with processes.

“Information security professionals are in place to protect property. Namely, they are in place to protect the property of their sponsor, usually a corporation…The privacy professional is protecting the individual from the accesses of a corporation, or from a larger entity.”

What does an information security professional need to know about privacy?

Within the world of security, privacy regulations and laws are often seen as a headache. However, according to Adam, privacy is misunderstood by many security professionals, who group privacy policies with the same technical protocols they use throughout their work. Privacy is administrative and reliant on how someone behaves within their workplace. Although technology may aid in privacy policies, the steps companies have to go through to maintain privacy for their customers is dependent on individuals and on the ways they are able to enforce strict protective privacy protocols on these individuals.

“What security professionals need to understand about privacy is that many, if not most, of the solutions to privacy problems, are not technological. They are process. They are administrative.”

If security awareness training is a norm, why isn't there privacy awareness training?

There are a lot of perceptions about privacy, and Adam admits that many of them are unfortunately negative. Between the headache of privacy law and the lack of privacy awareness within companies and organizations, what are people supposed to think about privacy? In Adam’s opinion, the perspective on privacy needs to shift and companies need to better understand that privacy is a customer service concern. Caring about how you market to someone, how you sell your wares, and the impact you have on your customers is a way to build trust with them and to provide them a higher quality of customer service, and all of that falls under the umbrella of privacy.

“In my view, [privacy awareness] is awareness of how you are communicating, how you are selling, how you are marketing, that potentially endangers the privacy of the individual.”

How do you keep up with the myriad of privacy laws that are constantly coming out and changing?

Adam has heard from security and privacy professionals alike about the anxiety of changing privacy laws, but his answer to the concern is to point out that someone simply can’t keep up with these privacy law changes on their own. Whether relying on the International Association of Privacy Professionals, or IAPP, or calling in the counsel of a legal team or privacy lawyer, there are numerous resources available for privacy and security professionals to learn about privacy laws, study them, and come to the conclusion of where to draw the lines and what decisions to make about privacy policies.

“There’s a line to be drawn between interpreting and operationalizing statutes and regulations, versus interpreting a given statute or regulation for purposes of defending oneself in court. That is where we really need the expertise and the authority that a lawyer brings to the table.”