Three reasons why tech CEOs are prioritising privacy and calling for tougher regulation
When Apple CEO Tim Cook took to the stage at a conference in Brussels last October, he became the first CEO of a major tech firm to spell out publicly his concern about data collection, surveillance, and information manipulation. In his keynote, he expressed alarm at the creation of a “data industrial complex” that “weaponized against people with military efficiency” (1).
In a recent CNBC interview, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty raised concerns about regulations hindering the digital economy and emphasised the need for increased trust and transparency between organisations and their customers.
“Really what we have to protect is consumer privacy, and that’s consent, opt out, ability to delete, and that is what I would call almost like precision medicine — precision regulation.” (2)
Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins, a long time advocate of stronger privacy legislation, went further and called for the enactment of federal privacy legislation (3).
So, why are top tech CEO’s now prioritising privacy and focussing on compliance to data regulations?
Before we get to that, here is a quick recap of what the GDPR is. The General Data Protection Regulation, introduced in 25 May 2018, is EU legislation that aims to give its citizens control over their personal data collected, managed, stored and re-used by businesses, large and small. Similar regulations are shaping up elsewhere in the world in countries like Brazil, India, Singapore, Canada and the state of California. So clearly, no CEO can shy away from this issue. Here are three major reasons why this is on top of every executive agenda.
Reason 01: The new data regulation is hindering digitisation
Until recently, organisations leveraged data to build their businesses, using profiling to provide advanced services based on consumer behaviour, location, personal choices etc. This benefited both parties where privacy was largely self-regulated. However, with the emergence of new data monetisation business models, misuse of data has become rampant and consumer privacy — and confidence — has taken a hit. The lack of self regulation and increased consumer uproar led to the wholesale redrafting of outdated data protection and privacy directives. With the GDPR and other data protection legislation, regulators hope to restore consumer trust in the digital world. Despite it coming at the expense of creating speed bumps in any organisation’s digital transformation journey, it provides pointers to where organisations should go.
The digital economy is built on data. Personal data makes up a major share of data in any organisation’s digitisation journey. Without trust, consumers will increasingly opt out of sharing their data and the digital economy stands to suffer.
Reason 02: An opportunity for high veracity data with consumer centricity
The new data regulations are putting the consumer back at the centre of attention with organisations needing lawful basis, such as consents, to use personal data. The use of new innovative platforms allows organisations to engage with consumers in real-time, creating opportunities such as:
- new offerings, where the consumer is incentivised in the process.
- data veracity, leveraging consumers for data cleansing and data integrity
- higher data volume, by empowering and engaging with consumers while staying on the right side of the law.
Reason 03: Brand value of being transparent and trustworthy, as a competitive differentiator
The recent backlash against technology companies that have misused data has shaken up the industry leaving traditional businesses with a great opening to step up and seize the opportunity to differentiate their offerings.
Facebook, for example, lost a whopping $119 billion in market capitalization in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal because of concerns over privacy. A similar finding of a Harvard Business Review study (4) points out how a company can limit the impact of a data breach on its share price by implementing two important privacy-focused practices: first, by being transparent about the use of consumer data; and second, by giving customers ample control over the use and sharing of their data.
Why iGrant.io? And why are we so excited?
We started the iGrant.io journey in 2017, and we are thrilled that our proposition chimes perfectly with the sentiments of Ginni Rometty and Tim Cook.
Apple has demonstrated its commitment by releasing a privacy dashboard which aims to provide Apple customers with full transparency and control over their data. This is exactly what we envisioned and have realised for the iGrant.io platform, launched at Web Summit (Release 1.0) 2018. Any organisation onboarding on to the iGrant.io platform can easily release a privacy dashboard that provides complete transparency and control for their customers, thereby building trust and digital privacy (5).
References:
- Full text of Tim Cook keynote at Brussels, 28-October 2018: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/24/apples-tim-cook-warns-silicon-valley-it-would-be-destructive-to-block-strong-privacy-laws.html (Last retrieved: 05-February-2019)
- CNBC Interview of IBM CEO Rometty: This is what could topple the whole digital economy. 24-January 2019. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/22/ibms-rometty-on-privacy-regulations-the-casualty-is-the-digital-economy.html (Last retrieved: 05-February 2019)
- Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins calls for a federal privacy law, 07-February-2019: https://nordic.businessinsider.com/cisco-ceo-chuck-robbins-calls-for-federal-privacy-law-2019-2?r=US&IR=T (Last retrieved: 06-February 2019)
- A strong privacy policy can save your company millions, Harvard Business Review, Feb 2018 (Last retrieved: 07-February 2019)
- Data sharing and consent management: Making consumer choice a business opportunity, iGrant.io white paper, June 2018 (Last retrieved: 07-February 2019)
