5 “Carrots” For Making the Privacy Business Case
Privacy is not just a compliance checkbox. Privacy practitioners traditionally have had to make the argument for privacy in the negative: if we don’t have good privacy practices in place, we will get breached, fined, or sued. After all, good privacy practices can save your company a fortune in compliance costs. Remember, we are living in the age of GDPR penalties of up to 4% of annual global revenue, FTC $5 billion dollar fines, and $1.4 billion dollar breach costs. (And before you bring up the counterpoint of how Facebook and Experian can afford these hefty numbers, ask yourself this: can your company?)
But the traditional “stick” gets old fast, which is why I prefer diversifying and stuffing my privacy toolbox with “carrots.” Beyond its baseline compliance function, privacy can also differentiate your company from its competitors, help you increase your bottomline, help you unlock the value of data, save you a fortune in enforcement and privacy incident response costs, and provide your company an opportunity to do right by your customers, users, employees, and partners.
Depending on your audience — your CEO, your Board, your product team, your marketing team, or your shareholders — the following points could help you make the case for privacy within your company.
