IAPP: Privacy Profession Taking More Prominence as Data Protection Complexity Burgeons
Despite financial pressure, geopolitical instability, more data protection rules and other challenges, the privacy profession continues demonstrating "an extraordinary capacity for adaption and resilience," the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) said in a report published Tuesday. Nine of 10 companies responding to this year's survey said they feel at least somewhat confident about their privacy governance program, it said.
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The profession is in a prominent position and can take on greater responsibilities such as AI governance, cybersecurity and content moderation, IAPP said. A key theme in the report is how sustained investment in and higher prominence for privacy governance and its professionals have resulted in stronger and more confident practices.
Additional findings include that more than 80% of privacy professionals say they're taking on more responsibilities. For example, privacy pros are often asked to take on AI governance, platform liability and other issues.
However, 74% found their privacy budgets are somewhat insufficient. The trend of "doing more with less" is concerning, IAPP Director of Research and Insights Joe Jones said in an email. While the volume, variety and complexity of digital governance work are rising and becoming more interrelated, which brings heightened risk, organizations' budgets remain relatively flat, he noted.
The research highlighted key trends in global privacy legislation. For example, it found 82% of the world's population lives in countries with comprehensive national privacy laws. That's a "drastic rise" from five years ago, when the percentage was 10%. The role of privacy professionals in navigating the global patchwork of laws and building effective privacy programs has never been more important or challenging, the IAPP said.
But, while success in doing so is a "positive differentiator" for entities in their use of data, 70% of respondents to the IAPP survey said a lack or limited availability of the right privacy skills and resources has limited their ability to achieve privacy goals. That finding reflects "the continuing and escalating complexity of the issues, with new laws, enforcement decisions, court rulings, and technological applications upending privacy programs and practices," said Jones: It also partly represents a "tight backdrop of fiscal and economic constraints and a misperception that privacy governance" slows or disables "business functions rather than something that spurs innovation."
Is the IAPP seeing indications that the Trump Administration's focus on privacy/data protection differs from that of the Biden Administration? "We can expect change on some issues and some continuity on other issues," Jones said. Generally, IAPP foresees a stronger focus on economic growth and American equities and leadership that will likely frame much domestic and even international work on privacy and data protection. "We’ve seen this already in the context of the revocation of the Biden Executive Order on AI on day one of the new Trump Administration."