Privitar Reports That Urgent Steps Are Required to Restore Trust in Organizations That Process Data

Latest
research from Privitar, the data privacy software company, reveals a
stunning lack of consumer trust in the ability of private and public
sector organizations to protect their data, as well as sharply
conflicting views between businesses and consumers regarding
transparency in data collection and use.

In the 2019
Privitar Privacy Pulse, released today at the International
Association of Privacy Professionals Global Summit, not a single
industry among those included in the research – Healthcare, Utilities,
Finance, Retail, Government, Telecoms and Social Media – earned even a
50% rating for data-protection trustworthiness. Healthcare (47%) ranked
highest in trustworthiness and Social Media (21%) ranked lowest.

The research, surveying 5,128 consumer respondents and 751 business
respondents in the US, UK and France, shows consumers and businesses are
at great odds regarding how personal data is collected and shared. While
the vast majority of consumers (81%) said they want more control over
when they choose to share their personal data, more than three quarters
(79%) of the businesses claimed they already empower their customers to
decide how their data is used and feel they are adequately explaining
this process.

Privitar’s Privacy Pulse findings also highlight the level of consumer
angst about data privacy. A majority of consumer respondents saw
increased regulation as a way to improve data privacy and protection. US
consumers were the most likely to agree that stricter data regulations
make them feel safer, with 68% agreeing compared to 65% globally.

The Privitar research shows businesses in a risk-reward quandary.
Although a significant majority of businesses want to do more to better
manage and protect data as well as make it more accessible, their fear
of privacy risk and reputational damage caused by privacy protection
failures are holding them back.

While 73% of businesses said they could be doing more to effectively
manage and protect their data and 74% said they could be doing more to
make their data accessible to the people who need it, 66% said the risks
associated with using their data are not worth the potential benefits
the organization.

Jason du Preez, Privitar’s CEO said: “These latest research findings
reaffirm our belief that there is an urgent need for both trusted
privacy-protection measures and much greater transparency in how data
insights are used. We must always be cognizant that data points and
statistics relate to people – to individuals with personal lives and a
right to self-determination.”

Du Preez noted there are practical steps organizations can take today to
overcome the trust and transparency challenges, harness the power of
their data, and realize significant business value from it. “By
embracing privacy-by-design principles and ensuring that ethical data
practices are firmly in place, businesses have the opportunity to make
data privacy a competitive advantage,” said du Preez.

He laid out five steps for building trust and unlocking the power of
data:

1. Be transparent with customers about when, how and why their data is
collected

2. Clearly communicate to customers the benefits of sharing their data –
for them individually, for their community and for society

3. Recruit, retain and train teams of data privacy experts – and empower
them to establish the right infrastructure across the business

4. Equip the business with effective data privacy products to enable
safer and wider data utilisation while adhering to local and/or
international regulation

5. Centralize and automate data privacy governance to ensure greater
consistency, compliance and control

The white paper on Privitar’s latest Privacy Pulse is available here.

Ends

Notes to editors

Privitar Privacy Pulse Wave 2 methodology:

Privitar commissioned Edelman Intelligence to survey over 2000 consumers
in the UK, 2000 in the US and over 1000 consumers in France (total 5128
respondents). The respondents were aged over 18 and representative of
gender, age, region and income. Edelman Intelligence also surveyed 250
business respondents in each of the three markets (total 751
respondents). The respondents all have an influence in decisions about
their organisation’s data management, from departments such as IT, data
analytics, data management and security. The respondents also reflected
a spread across 6 industry sectors: banking and financial services,
telecoms, healthcare, civil and social services and local government,
retail and utilities.

About Privitar

Privitar
provides data-privacy software to companies and public sector
organizations around the world to protect sensitive data and enable
ethical data analysis. Privitar's software accelerates and automates the
provision of privacy-preserving data, helping customers extract more
business value from their data, generate data-driven insights, and drive
innovation. Privitar was established in 2014 with headquarters in London
and offices in New York, Boston, Singapore and Paris. The company raised
$16m in a Series A funding round in July 2017, led by Partech Ventures
and Salesforce Ventures with support from existing investors IQ Capital,
24Haymarket and Illuminate Financial. In December 2018, Citi invested in
a minority stake in Privitar.

Privitar hosts an annual community event -In:Confidence-
with luminary privacy experts and commentators and contributes regularly
to the public discourse on privacy matters. You can read and subscribe
to the latest news and opinions from Privitar here.

For more information, please visit www.privitar.com

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