Privacy regulation soon protects 75% of global personal data

Author Moonshot.news

Published on: 31/05/2022

75% of the world’s population will have its personal data covered under modern privacy regulation by 2024, marketing and research firm Gartner says in a forecast adding that there are five more important trends: data localization; AI governance; centralized privacy UX; hybrid everything; privacy-enhancing computation techniques.

“As the number of privacy regulations worldwide continues to grow, organizations should focus on five privacy trends to help meet the challenges of protecting personal data and meeting regulatory requirements”, Gartner says.

The company says that with the expansion of privacy regulation efforts across dozens of jurisdictions in the next two years, many organizations will see the need to start their privacy program efforts now. Gartner predicts that large organizations’ average annual budget for privacy will exceed USD 2.5 million by 2024.

The five privacy trends:

Data Localization

This control is either a direct requirement or a byproduct of many emerging privacy laws The risks to a multicountry business strategy drive a new approach to the design and acquisition of cloud across all service models, as security and risk management leaders face an uneven regulatory landscape with different regions requiring different localization strategies. As a result, data localization planning will shift to a top priority in the design and acquisition of cloud services.

Privacy-Enhancing Computation Techniques

Data processing in untrusted environments – such as public cloud – and multiparty data sharing and analytics have become foundational to an organization’s success. Rather than taking a bolt-on approach, the increasing complexity of analytics engines and architectures mandates that vendors incorporate a by-design privacy capability. The pervasiveness of AI models and the necessity to train them is only the latest addition to privacy concerns. Unlike common data-at-rest security controls, privacy-enhancing computation (PEC) protects data in use. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 60% of large organizations will use at least one PEC technique in analytics, business intelligence and/or cloud computing.

AI Governance

Whether organizations process personal data through an AI-based module integrated into a vendor offering, or a discrete platform managed by an in-house data science team, the risks to privacy and potential misuse of personal data are clear. Once AI regulation becomes more established, it will be nearly impossible to untangle toxic data ingested in the absence of an AI governance program. IT leaders will be left having to rip out systems wholesale, at great expense to their organizations and to their standing.

Centralized Privacy UX

Increased consumer demand for subject rights and raised expectations about transparency will drive the need for a centralized privacy user experience (UX). Forward-thinking organizations understand the advantage of bringing together all aspects of the privacy UX — notices, cookies, consent management and subject rights requests (SRR) handling — into one self-service portal. By 2023, Gartner predicts that 30% of consumer-facing organizations will offer a self-service transparency portal to provide for preference and consent management.

Remote Becomes “Hybrid Everything”

With engagement models in work and life settling into hybrid, both the opportunity and desire for increased tracking, monitoring and other personal data processing activities rise, and privacy risk becomes paramount.

Organizations should take a human-centric approach to privacy, and monitoring data should be used minimally and with clear purpose, such as improving employee experience by removing unnecessary friction or mitigating burnout risk by flagging well-being risks.