Many Privacy Pros 'Drowning in Reactive Work,' Says Consultant
Successful privacy professionals make the most of limited resources, BlueSky Privacy CEO Teresa Troester-Falk said in an IAPP opinion piece Thursday.
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“Most privacy professionals are managing significant compliance responsibilities while drowning in reactive work and competing demands from across their organizations,” wrote the privacy consultant: It’s not just “a problem affecting a few unlucky privacy officers.” Troester-Falk believes “this isn't a temporary problem that organizations will eventually fix -- it's the permanent operating environment for our profession,” she said. “And, counterintuitively, it might be the key to building programs that work.”
At many companies, “the appointment of a privacy lead is usually reactive -- triggered by a new regulation, a vendor requirement, or a client question that leadership can no longer ignore,” the consultant said. “What follows is a formal title, an inbox full of expectations and very little infrastructure to support it.” The rise of AI exacerbates the challenge, with many organizations expecting privacy professionals to additionally handle AI governance, she said.
However, “success stories in privacy are rarely about teams who waited for ideal conditions,” said Troester-Falk. “They're about professionals who started where they were -- with limited access, unclear ownership and very little internal precedent -- and built something useful anyway.”
“The privacy professionals I've witnessed who achieve the most meaningful results are those who have developed the judgment to focus on what drives risk reduction,” she added. “Effective privacy professionals can distinguish between genuine priorities and manufactured urgency. They build programs that work in practice and can be explained, maintained and defended with clear evidence.”