Segment Celebrates Data Privacy Day
In today’s world, we share our personal information all the time, from online shopping to social media, we emit data throughout our daily lives. With our information now being shared across more services than ever, it’s also more important than ever to ensure it’s protected.
At Segment, we recognize the enormous importance of protecting personal information. With billions of data points flowing through our services every day, we can’t afford not to. In celebrating Data Privacy Day we spread our privacy values throughout the company and redouble our commitment to protecting personal information.
What is Data Privacy Day?
Data Privacy Day, also known as Data Protection Day outside the US, celebrates the first legally binding international law regarding data protection. On January 28, 1981, the Council of Europe signed Convention 108, an agreement where the parties are required to take the necessary steps in their domestic legislation to apply the principles it lays down. This was done in order to ensure that each territory respects the fundamental human rights of all individuals with regard to processing of personal data.
Convention 108 is the origin of the right to data protection and it is why Europeans celebrate Data Protection Day annually. In 2009, the United States Congress passed a resolution declaring January 28 as Data Privacy Day.
CCPA, Getting A Grip on Data:
2019 was a big year for privacy, especially with the further development of the California Consumer Privacy Act, at Segment’s home in California. Last year, a series of amendments to the act were passed and the California Attorney General kicked off its rulemaking process to make clarifications ahead of its January 2020 effective date.
Despite some kinks yet to be sorted out, Californian’s now can enjoy powerful new privacy rights, including the ability to see what data companies have gathered about them, have that data deleted, and to opt out of those companies selling it to third parties.
2020 is sure to be another exciting year for privacy as other states like Washington and New York develop their own privacy laws and Congress negotiates a national privacy bill.
Data Privacy Day at Segment:
Creating a cohesive privacy program means getting buy-in from the entire organization. Because privacy is such a cross-functional endeavor, our aim is to make the company as a whole understand our privacy principles and why they are critical. To this end, we’ve organized an engaging privacy themed lunch, complete with a Bahn Mi “barred-from-accessing-your-info” Bar, privacy themed music, and privacy fun facts projected onto the walls. There’s no better way to raise privacy awareness than with food!
Last but not least, we unveil our privacy mascot. Introducing Huxley, the Privacy Pangolin! Huxley will be our internal privacy representative. The Pangolin is a natural privacy mascot; these solitary and nocturnal animals protect themselves with their armored scales. The Pangolin is private by design.
