Next week, 1,600+ privacy professionals are heading to Austin for the annual IAPP Privacy. Security. Risk. conference. The educational opportunity and discussions happening at this conference every year surfaces new ideas, best practices, and top challenges for the privacy profession.

This assembly of industry leaders and professionals is a great opportunity to take the pulse of the privacy profession. What are the top concerns? What topics are especially pressing? If you’ve attended the Privacy. Security. Risk. event in the past, you know that this event features a packed agenda. Between networking opportunities and in-depth educational panels, we’re anticipating some great insights – and some clues as to what topics are particularly of interest in today’s privacy climate.

With this in mind, here are three topics that I will be paying close attention to during the week of workshops, certification trainings, and general conference sessions:

The intersection of technology and privacy – both as a challenge, and as the solution.

We hear a lot these days about the risks technology poses to consumer privacy – from IoT devices and chatbots to smart home devices listening in on your private conversations. There are plenty of sessions at P.S.R. this year that dive into the complex impacts of this technology on protecting privacy. The session I’m looking forward to, however, is about how technology and automation is helping the privacy profession stay ahead of the risks and remain compliant with privacy regulations. The session, “How Privacy Tech is Bought and Deployed,” features a discussion of the recent IAPP & TrustArc research on privacy tech adoption. Speakers include the CPO from Alexion Pharmaceuticals, the Head of Compliance and Privacy for US and Europe with Alibaba Cloud, and General Counsel and Chief Data Governance Officer at TrustArc.

Session Highlight:
How Privacy Tech is Bought and Deployed, Thursday, October 18 from 9:00-10:00 AM.


If you’re interested in learning more about the applications of technology in privacy, TrustArc and RADAR are hosting a welcome party for P.S.R. attendees, immediately following the conference welcome reception. Join for drinks, appetizers, and great conversations –
learn more and register to attend.

Continued buzz regarding regulatory changes.

At last year’s P.S.R. event, the then-looming EU GDPR effective date was the hubbub around the exhibit hall, the skuttlebutt of the sessions, and the talk of the town. How would it be enforced? How were people preparing? Here we are, nearly 5 months post-effective date, and this is still a rich topic of discussion. One of the hallmarks of the privacy profession is the constantly changing regulations that keep everyone on their toes. This year, we will be keeping an eye on the discussions around regulatory changes in the states and beyond – from CaCPA (Alastair Mactaggart, who proposed the measure, will keynote the event) and constantly evolving state regulations, to Canada’s PIPEDA amendment and continued monitoring of the GDPR.  Of particular interest is a session comparing and contrasting the GDPR and CaCPA, identifying the unique challenges CaCPA might bring.

Session Highlight:
Out: GDPR; In: CaCPA; Compare and Contrast, Friday, October 19 from 9:00 – 10:00 AM.

Working smarter, not harder: process improvements and best practices.

If you’ve been paying attention to the evolving role of privacy professionals, it shouldn’t be a surprise that with new threat vectors and increasingly complex regulations, the workload for privacy teams has grown tremendously. Some of the best takeaways from P.S.R. every year are the ones that you can bring straight back to your team at the office – the best practices, tips, and learnings that can be applied to your program right away. Here, I would like to suggest attending the panel session “Let your Data Do the Talking: Benchmarking Your Privacy Program.” This session was so popular at P.S.R. last year that we were invited back to do an encore, with fresh metrics and insights to share, drawn from our ongoing article series with the IAPP Privacy Advisor. The panel includes our CEO, Mahmood Sher-Jan, who will be joined by moderator and Privacy Advisor editor Angelique Carson, Anne Fealey, Global CPO at Prudential, and Kimberly Genobles, CPO at Ally Bank. They will discuss common performance indicators, industry best practices, and benchmarks to help privacy officers gauge how their programs are measuring up.

Session Highlight:
Let your Data Do the Talking: Benchmarking your Privacy Program, Friday, October 19 from 10:30 – 11:30 AM

IAPP PSR Benchmarking Panelists 2018

 

Let’s Connect at the Conference.

There are several opportunities to connect with the RADAR team at this event. Stop by booth 109 to learn how our patented technology simplifies compliance with data breach notification laws (including live demonstrations of our new PIPEDA regulatory workflow). Or, catch us at one of the following scheduled events:

  • 6:30 – 6:50 PM Wednesday, October 17: Little Big Stage Presentation during the welcome reception
    Join RADAR’s Doug Kruger for an action-packed 20 minute presentation titled Taming Compliance with Growing Global Data Breach Regulations. The IAPP Little Big Stage has been called entertaining, informative and other things—but never boring.
  • 7:00 – 10:00 PM Wednesday, October 17: TrustArc:RADAR Welcome Party immediately following the conference welcome reception
    TrustArc and RADAR are hosting a welcome party to network with P.S.R. attendees for some fun the night the conference kicks off. This event is a 1 minute walk from the conference venue – join us for drinks, appetizers, and great conversation as we kick off the 2018 conference!  Register to attend.
  • 10:30 – 11:30 AM session, Friday, October 19: Let Your Data Do the Talking: Benchmarking Your Privacy Program
    How do you develop concrete metrics to gauge the results of your incident response program — and how do you demonstrate those results to your executive team, board, and internal stakeholders? This panel represents multiple perspectives involved in privacy programs and their various common benchmarking metrics in incident response. By analyzing the metadata of the trove of privacy and security incidents documented and reported through the RADAR incident response management platform, we have identified common performance indicators and industry best practices and benchmarks that will help you determine how your privacy program measures up.