New Hot Job: Privacy Officer

Many Major Cybersecurity Hacks, Little Impact

If you follow cybersecurity closely, it's hard not to be jaded. We’ve seen some major cybersecurity hacks: Yahoo, Sony, Home Depot, the list goes on and on. And the hacks seem to get bigger and bigger.

The result? Companies, governments, customers, and stock markets mostly brush them off and move on. No biggie.

As a result, many companies only do what is required by government and only when forced to, such as the US Department of Defense requiring all defense contractors to implement CMMC/DFARS.

But when not required, most companies do much less than they should.

Privacy Has Consequences

Privacy looks to be different. There are consequences far beyond the privacy regulations in Europe, California, Texas, and Nevada.

Facebook’s $5 billion fine to the FTC for misrepresenting its privacy program jumps out a potential outlier, until you look at the other major fines. Equifax was fined $575 million for failing to secure personally identifiable information, and Marriot was fined $123 million for violating European privacy laws. These are large, major fines. For comparison, the largest ever HIPAA fine was only $16 million.

And people care about whether companies protect their personal information. 32% are willing to switch to a competitor if a company doesn’t protect their privacy, according to a 2019 Cisco study. This is particularly true among those who are younger, more affluent, and shop online.

Privacy to Become the New Hot Job

If you’re a CEO and you see that you have an extensive cybersecurity program and face minimal consequences for cybersecurity breaches but that your privacy program is minimal and you face potential $100+ million fines, which team do you think you’ll want to plus-up?

Demand for privacy professionals is already high. IAPP estimates that GDPR alone created a need for 28,000 Data Protection Officers. CCPA and a likely US National Privacy law in 2021 will greatly increase that number.

And hot jobs don’t come cheap. The average Chief Privacy Officer in the United States earns a $191,861 yearly base salary, according to Glassdoor.

Companies will have to beef up their privacy teams or hire external privacy consultants. To address this, we offer our customers Virtual Chief Privacy and Data Protection Officer services, allowing them to get top privacy experts and fulfill GDPR and other privacy regulation requirements at a fraction of the cost of a full time employee.

Set up a meeting today to learn more.