Security Magazine: What to prioritize this Data Privacy Day

January 28th is Data Privacy Day. Data Privacy Day “generates awareness about the importance of privacy, highlights easy ways to protect personal information and reminds organizations that privacy is good for business,” according to Security Magazine.

In recognition of Data Privacy Day, Security Magazine published the article ‘What to prioritize this Data Privacy Day,’ which features advice from Andrew Sellers, QOMPLX CTO and co-founder, as well as other industry leaders at companies such as Blackberry, Vectra, and LogMein.

Sellers writes, "This year's Data Privacy Day will allow us a collective moment to reflect on how COVID-19 has impacted the privacy landscape. Companies have quickly responded to a new working culture as they faced economic uncertainty, social movements, and natural disasters. For many of us, working from home and contact tracing have become part of our new normal during this pandemic.  In our haste to address urgent needs, we as a society haven't fully rationalized what controls assure us that private data held by corporations remains protected even though IT departments have largely discarded legacy assumptions of where and how data is accessed now that so much of the workforce is suddenly remote.  Sensitive business can be done over teleconference from our homes, but many of these solutions have been proven to be susceptible to eavesdropping.  Similarly, contact tracing has certainly saved lives and reduced infectious disease transmission during the pandemic.  But we should also consider that creating this capability to work so transparently and automatically was only possible because those that make mobile devices and apps are so well practiced at geolocality analytics.  In the age of Surveillance Capitalism, as Shoshana Zuboff has termed our times, many uses of these technologies are not anonymized and are far less benevolent.  Consumers are becoming more aware of these issues and are beginning to hold companies accountable with their purchasing patterns by demanding products that include end-to-end encryption that users can manage.  As wonderful and enabling as new technology has the potential to be, Data Privacy Day is yet again a good reminder that we must also be aware of what is at stake as we collectively work toward a better future."

Read the full article here.