The CPO as Matador

In the sport of bullfighting, there is a phrase that is often used: Torear la suerte. Literally translated it means “bullfight your fate”, but it is often interpreted to be understood as a kind of code, a way of life, a philosophy about adversity and the fortitude to persevere. And succeed while putting on a fabulous show at the same time. Disorder, chaos and unrest in your personal life or business life does not build character, it actually reveals it. Every battle is an opportunity to exhibit what lays beneath your surface, and reveal the real you. Much is at stake here.

So with paraphrase apologies to Frank Underwood on House of Cards, I like to say that there are two kinds of Chief Privacy Officers: Door mats and matadors.

All day, every day, there are lot of ‘bulls’ coming at you, the matador: the woman or man whose job it is to protect data and ensure the privacy of that data, and generally to provide peace of mind to a lot of people. The business, regulators, legislators, negligent or malicious employees, hackers, and malware are all like a bull coming at you. You have two choices: you can either be trampled, like a doormat is, or you can use your cape (skills) as a metaphoric instrument to solve the risks and challenges of modern day privacy.

Increasingly, and for good, reason, the role of the Chief Privacy Officer is gaining the visibility it has long sought and deserved. Thanks in no part to the myriad number of high profile data breaches of the past 3 years affecting every sector, the CPO role has begun to get its 15 minutes of fame in the bull ring (‘plaza de toros’).

No longer buried in Legal, Compliance or even IT, the CPO role increasingly gets a seat at the table to not only clean up the messes that upstream control failures have wrought, but is now being asked to become more thoughtful and strategic in her/his thinking to avert the next crisis.

Much like bullfighting itself, managing the privacy of information for a firm has become a kind of choreographed ballet of tradeoffs. Is there too much security? Too little security? Are we over doing the security for convenience? Should we emphasize features or privacy? The CPO now has taken the decision reigns and weighs in with influence like never before. The most judicious companies ensure that the CPO has both voice and a vote for every initiative that involves customer or employee data.

As recently as a decade ago, the CPO position was just another piece of a hat someone in the organization (likely the General Counsel, CISO or CIO) had to wear because it sounded like a good idea to have one in the company. But the gesture was largely symbolic, and the role was often a dead end, or met with infrequent success. But unlike in bullfighting where the bull has little chance for long-term success, a CPO now has a likelihood of survival success that has never been better.

Privacy’s Special Place in the Heart of the Customer

I once worked at a company where in addition to responsibilities for privacy, I also was in charge of records management. Though the discipline of records management and retention was interesting, I seem to recall that every night when I walked out the door, the thought of records never crossed my mind. (Nor any of my fellow employees' minds either, I’ll bet). Not that this responsibility wasn’t important, it’s just that the work never created any serious passion or enthusiasm in me.

Privacy, on the other hand, without overly romanticizing it, is an entirely different matter. I understand that it’s easy to feel no connection or relationship to some disciplines you deal with at work every day. You just do it in the office; you leave the office, and you leave those thoughts and concerns there as well. See you tomorrow, old job! Privacy, I always argue, is different. It’s special. It’s accessible. When you walk out of the door from work, you still carry your anxieties and thoughts about privacy with you. Since everyone now has either a LinkedIn profile, a Facebook page or both, or their kids have it, we are conscious of privacy, and everyone cares about it, or is at least mindful of it. Everyone has a smartphone and everyone goes apoplectic if they think they’ve lost it – and the thought of everything in it. Not because the phone or the contents contained therein are not replaceable, but because it means that a little bit of their private space has been lost, Or worse, maybe intruded upon.

I’ve always been somewhat grateful when I've had to create the training curriculum for privacy awareness courses because the concept is easy to convey to even the most non-technical user. Teaching someone about anti-money laundering concepts or risks of currency fluctuations or the benefits of dual authentication is a lot harder than teaching them that privacy matters to both the customer and to them. Why? Because they already get it! They deal with it all day every day outside of work already so they have a familiarity that makes them realize the urgency for your business that much easier.

The problem institutionally though is that privacy still largely serves as a compliance-related function in most organizations; a box to be checked. In many cases, the privacy team sits obscured in Legal or Information Security, even HR (!) and does not always get the visibility they need to provide the true value to an organization. Very data intensive and customer-facing businesses where data pays the bills, however, realize the worth of a strong privacy program. Their privacy teams are highly leveraged, CEO or Board-facing entities because those kinds of companies realize the strategic asset that is data today.

Data, and lots of it, has always been a by-product of most businesses. Historically, ‘data’ had been looked upon as just another company commodity to be managed or warehoused like an extra tractor or overruns from last season’s fashions. The confidentiality and privacy of the data was mostly an afterthought. Today, data is like a new natural resource for companies. Certain highly regulated industries like healthcare or financial services where privacy is almost a duty to the customer, however, know intuitively that properly using privacy can be a competitive advantage that, though intangible, is a brand differentiator. (See DuckDuckGo)

Building and maintaining the trust between company and customer is paramount for a long-term and profitable relationship, on both ends. Without the sense that a company will respect and protect the privacy of the data entrusted to it, the association between the two is simply a transaction; complete it, and move on. Companies don’t want that, and customers really don’t either.

People value their privacy and they want the businesses they do business with to do so too. Consumers want to associate a brand with the notion of privacy, especially if an exchange of sensitive data is involved. Do it right and customers will place that notion right in their hearts.

Stop the credit monitoring madness!

You’ve seen headline after headline on data breaches. Then, shortly thereafter you see the obligatory, and often perfunctory, statements like the ones below (actually excerpted from recent public breach notification messages):

- If we confirm a breach, we will offer free identity protection services, including credit monitoring, to any potentially
impacted customers.

- For extra assurance, we will offer free credit monitoring services for everyone impacted.

I am in no way castigating any company that steps ups and tries to do the right thing by its customers; I applaud that. That’s what a great company does. I do, however, question the value of epidemic-like, knee jerk reactions of providing identity theft services/credit monitoring for everything and anything that smells like a data or security breach.


* We lost your package. Have some credit monitoring!
* A box containing your monthly statements fell off of our truck. Have some credit monitoring!
* Your bill arrived in the mail without the envelope hermetically sealed. Have some credit monitoring!
* We accidentally told your ex-spouse your new address with the replacement spouse. Have some credit monitoring!


I kid, of course. But it is a de facto ‘best' business practice that if anything comes close to appearing that a customer’s data is compromised, a company throws free credit monitoring at the customer. The problem is that, for most scenarios, credit monitoring does little or nothing to remediate the situation. In fact, all it really does is placate a customer who feels as though they should receive ‘something’ for their troubles, and gives the appearance that the company is contrite (and of course mitigate some legal liability). In the situation where real personal and sensitive data elements (Name, address, social security number, tax returns, etc) are compromised, then the absolute right thing to do is offer identity theft services to prevent further harm to an individual’s financial integrity. But if, say, a debit card number is lost or stolen, or if a credit card is lost or stolen, what does credit monitoring actually do for the person? As far as I can tell, nothing. Can you open another credit or revolving account at a department store with a debit card as the only valid form of ID? Not that I’m aware of? Does credit monitoring prevent the thief who stole your credit card from continuously using it? Don’t think so.

What should the company do? I vote to immediately cancel the the cards in question and reissue them ASAP to the customer; refund any amounts that are patently fraudulent; apologize for the inconvenience; and thank the customer for their continued business Those actions to me effectively mitigates the existing and future risks to the customer. And doesn’t add to the hysteria.

An informal poll of my peers on the popularity of identity theft / credit monitoring services amongst their customers indicates that less than 10% of the offers actually get used. So, greater than 90%(!) of the customers who are offered the service, don’t activate it - not don’t use the services, but actually do not call up the credit company and turn on the service! Why? I suspect that in this age of breaches we as customers have gotten so many notification letters with identity theft offers that we have either enrolled five times over already and don’t need a sixth service. Or the once valued-service is now nothing more than a commodity to be tossed aside as casually as the letter that accompanies it. Or, we have become so desensitized to the threat that any level of effort to enroll in one of these services is effort better spent playing Candy Crush or watching Shark Week. Since almost every financial institution makes you 100% whole on any fraudulent charges as long as you report the charges in a timely manner, you may at worst suffer a little anxiety when you first see that charge for a big screen TV (that was subsequently returned for cash) on your ‘new' instant charge from Best Buy.

So can we all do ourselves, including customers, a favor? Let's save the offer of identity theft/credit monitoring services for when it is actually warranted? Let’s spend the time and money on efforts that will make all truly safer: upgrading encryption technologies, migrate to chip & PIN cards, deploy tokenization, stronger access controls…the list goes on. How to fund it all, you ask? Think of the savings on stamps from not having to mail all those offer letters!

How being a grumpy old man protects my privacy...

I don’t know about you, but every time I am in a retail store, finalizing a purchase at the register, the 17-year old clerk asks me for my zip code, or e-mail address or phone number. I have always just said “Nope.” I can then almost pluck the contempt from the air around us, it is so thick. I am sure this teenybopper wonders “What’s the concern Old Man? It’s only your zip code I’m asking for. We only use if for demographic analysis.” Really? That’s all, huh? Harmless is it?

Well, if you have been following the news of late with some high profile data breaches in the spotlight, you know that it is not just the usual suspects of non-public information that has been compromised: name, social security number, credit card or account numbers. In fact, many seemingly other innocuous data elements have also been taken along with NPI elements. Though many think that since their name or e-mail address or zip code is already semi-public information they have nothing to worry about. The fact is, that semi-public information along with any NPI that bad guys harvest will lead to a more intense and serious strain of identity theft since the picture about you and your profile is much more complete and fulsome.

It is takes is just a moment of grumpiness at the point of sale to better protect your privacy in the long run. Though it benefits tremendously both the retailer and the data brokers they partner with to have that additional bit of information you might surrender at the register, it does you no good. It is a lop-sided deal.

So just say “Nope.” You may suffer a puzzled look from some young punk behind the register, but what does he know? It will be worth the financial peace of mind