Building an Effective Privacy Program

Abstract Privacy and trust are essential to maintaining good relationships with customers, employees, and business partners. It is also necessary to address privacy issues to comply with a growing number of privacy regulations worldwide. Privacy encompasses how business must be conducted, the communications made with customers and consumers, and the technology that enables business processes. Addressing privacy touches all facets of an organization, including business operations, Web sites and services, back-end systems and databases, communications with third parties, customers, and service providers, and legacy systems. An effective privacy governance program will not only make your customers happier, but it will also mitigate your exposure to regulatory noncompliance, lawsuits, bad publicity, and government investigations. This article discusses the issues to address when building a privacy governance program.