This week has really been one for the books.

First, we have officially launched our new name and branding – RADAR, LLC is now RadarFirst. And secondly, I had the pleasure of attending the IAPP Privacy. Security. Risk. conference in Las Vegas and meeting face to face with privacy professionals from around the world.

I’ve written before that my inspiration for Radar struck at the end of 2009, motivated by firsthand observations of operational challenges facing privacy officers responsible for managing privacy incidents. It was fitting that, as we celebrate our 10-year anniversary and the next chapter as RadarFirst, I found myself again able to observe firsthand the new and old challenges privacy professionals continue to face at P.S.R.

So that’s what has been on my radar this week – the challenges privacy professionals face, and the ways that RadarFirst can continue to offer innovative solutions to complex data privacy challenges.

Here are just a couple of the challenges and concerns I heard this week in the halls of P.S.R.

CCPA

Unsurprisingly, there was a lot of buzz around this regulation, especially with the all-star panel which included Alastair Mactaggart, real estate developer who has become closely tied to the passage of the CCPA, and Stacey Schesser, Supervising Deputy AG for California’s DOJ. It seems that privacy professionals and regulators all alike are working to understand the impacts of the CCPA – especially how this regulation will be enforced. And that work isn’t going to slow down post-January 2020, given Mactaggart’s new ballot initiative that is even tougher on businesses collecting personal information.

Meanwhile, it’s critical that privacy professionals not lose site of the bigger picture, which is that other U.S. States are making moves to radically change their data privacy and protection measures. Keeping ahead of the changes, the enforcement dates, and what it can mean for our organizations is a herculean task.

Biometric data

The proliferation of the types of data we collect is something every privacy pro is all too aware of. But biometric data presents its own unique issues. For instance, when your credit card number is exposed as part of a data breach, there are steps you then take to cancel that card and have a new one issued to you. How are you supposed to do the same for face, iris, or finger biometrics? There is also a growing public pushback on companies collecting this type of data – employees are filing lawsuits against their companies and cities are banning the use of facial recognition technologies.

But the technology continues to grow in use. Consider this report, which indicates that the global healthcare biometrics market is expected to grow to $5.6B USD industry by 2022. And earlier this week,  representatives from the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) commented as to how accurate facial recognition technology has become, improved by a factor of 50 or 60 over the algorithms tested in 2010.

And this gets to the other big picture issue: the proliferation of data in our daily lives, and in the business functions we perform. Data is all around us, and the amount of data we can collect and generate on our customers is staggering.

The challenge remains: how do we govern our use of data, and be good stewards of the sensitive information our customers, patients, and employees trust us to keep safe? Solving these issues is at the core of what we’re doing here at RadarFirst.

Let’s keep the conversation going – what’s on your radar lately?