Perspectives on Communication with Guest Fatima Khan, Director, Corporate Counsel, Privacy & Product at Okta, and Advisor to The Rise of Privacy Tech
The Perspective on Communication Q&A series highlights the experiences and opinions from the cross-functional disciplines we work with most.
Fatima is a brilliant attorney with a keen understanding of effective communication. She’s had a very impressive legal career in security and privacy, and I’m proud to know her well enough to say she’s also a creative problem solver and incredibly funny. :)
I hope you enjoy reading her insights below as much as I do!
What was the privacy field like when you got started in this profession? What’s changed the most?
When I got started in the profession, privacy was a niche area of law with a small set of lawyers. In tech, a lot of big regulatory enforcement was largely focused on failures in reasonable security or martech/adtech issues such tracking and consumer preferences. Before regulation with higher table-stakes came into play, one of the most exciting parts of being in this field was the ability to creatively apply the law to new technology based on core privacy principles such as notice, choice, and transparency. While the legal requirements have become more prescriptive, the ability to creatively solve problems is still an important part of the application of privacy law to novel technology.
What influences steered you toward this field?
I first became interested in this space with the passage of the PATRIOT Act — I was appalled by the government’s ability to broadly surveil its citizens; and emerging technologies, such as the Internet, really helped propel that to a more extreme level. While ire over an infringement on our civil liberties was the initial draw, the excitement of continuous innovation in the tech industry is what has kept me interested in privacy and technology throughout my career — there is always something new to learn and a new challenge to tackle.
How important is it for you to have a strategic approach for communicating privacy across organizations?
Strategic communications is at the core of privacy and drives core privacy principles such as notice, choice, and transparency. While regulation is important, it’s too dense for the average lay person to grasp — communication is the key in implementing regulation and driving trust with customers/consumers, which is essential for any business to thrive.
A lot of companies are now pushing our marketing messaging about privacy, but do their broader reputation and business practices affect the way you think about their commitment to privacy?
In my opinion, “privacy washing” is not the right approach because privacy is driven by transparency. The customer/consumer relationship is paramount and misleading or deceptive practices will only hurt that relationship in the end.
What’s the best piece of communications advice you ever got?
The best piece of communications advice that I’ve heard is a kindergarten lesson — to be honest. In any customer/consumer relationship, mistakes sometimes happen — when those do, rather than trying to evade the truth, it’s important to be honest and address the mistakes to maintain long-term trust and retention.
100% agree!
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