I had the good fortune yesterday of moderating a fascinating webinar on Data Ethics and Privacy in Marketing. I define personal success in these webinars as (a) learning something new and (b) not saying anything incredibly stupid. Yesterday certainly checked the box on the first criteria for me, and I encourage you to take a look at the recording.1
Over the past few months I have realized that there are two significant forces driving the large agenda for much of the technology industry: privacy and security. Even for companies that don’t think they are directly impacted by these, the effects are real.
Privacy is at the root of much of the posturing, hand-wringing, and noise in the landscape right now as companies such as Apple begin to use it for their own competitive differentiation and consumer/regulatory focus on the topic skyrockets. Fundamentally, the shift is underway for humans to realize that technology and marketing has stripped away much of what was once considered private, and now it is time to try and get it back. Put another way, people are going to prioritize privacy in a way that has been absent in recent years, and companies are going to need to respond.
Security is related to privacy, but a fundamentally different beast altogether. Simply put, the technology infrastructure that has become the very fabric of civilization, from communications to the power grid; from health care to education; from government to financial systems; from home to work; is vulnerable and under constant attack. Viewed from a macro-level, the attack surface of the modern world has become so vast and so permeable that penetrating it is almost a necessary process for a sustainable ecosystem. Without regular and sophisticated attacks, a massive cybersecurity industry is at risk.
Security also rears its head as we think about health2 and food3 and the fabric of government across every country4 in the world.
Privacy. Humans realizing that we can and should control what is known about us and by whom.
Security. Humans realizing that we have entrusted our existence to vulnerable technologies.
If these two forces are not top of mind for you, take a closer look right now.
I’ll touch on these again and again going forward.
and let me know how I did on criteria (b)
Unfortunately this is not going to be the last pandemic…
Including the U.S.