To commemorate Data Privacy Day – an international effort held annually on Jan. 28 to generate awareness about the importance of respecting privacy, safeguarding data and enabling trust – the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) hosted an afternoon event, which was streamed live from LinkedIn’s offices in San Francisco, CA.

The “A New Era in Privacy” event, showcased cutting-edge discussions and a TED-style talk with leading experts with diverse perspectives who exchanged ideas about how to best bring this new dynamic into focus and address future challenges.

The half-day event had more than 140 in-person attendees, 2,300 views on YouTube and Facebook and 1,532 live online viewers via Periscope. The day’s activities were made possible by Data Privacy Day’s partner and host, LinkedIn, and sponsors: VISA and Verizon as Contributing Sponsors and Yubico, Mozilla and Trend Micro as Participating Sponsors. In addition, Call for Action, the Identity Theft Resource Center and Women in Security and Privacy were Nonprofit Partners and ITSPmagazine was a Media Partner.

After Welcome Remarks from Kalinda Raina, Head of Global Privacy, Senior Director, LinkedIn and Kelvin Coleman, Executive Director, National Cyber Security Alliance, the event kicked off with “A New Era in Privacy” – an enlightening conversation about the unprecedented privacy dynamic and what it means for Americans. Kelvin Coleman engaged Kalinda Raina and Karen Zacharia, Chief Privacy Officer, Verizon and reflected on how far privacy legislation has come over the past few years on a global scale. They shared insights on how GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act are changing the privacy landscape, especially for companies. Kalinda and Karen remarked on how data privacy isn’t just a concern for lawyers anymore, it has become every employee’s responsibility. They then discussed their views on what privacy legislation should look like on a federal level, including the importance of consistent, but flexible, legislation that applies to all industries but can keep up with the rapidly changing landscape.

In the next segment, “Improving Your Company’s Privacy Posture,” Larry Magid, CEO, ConnectSafely.org led a thought-provoking dialogue with John Gevertz, Chief Privacy Officer, Visa and Lourdes Turrecha, Senior Privacy Counsel, Palo Alto Networks who shared insights for companies on the business case for privacy, why companies should care and what unique approaches they can take to not only improve their privacy posture, but break through as leaders in privacy. Every company deals with personal data – whether it’s from their employees, customers or suppliers. Lourdes and John emphasized the importance of privacy by design and thinking about how you’re collecting, storing and using data from the very beginning when building an organization. They concluded the panel by sharing resources that are available to help companies find the right privacy approach for their organization as well as talking to colleagues who are facing the same challenges and reviewing how these issues are being dealt with in their respective companies.

Following the second panel, Merritt Baer, Principal Security Architect, Amazon Web Services Global Accounts, enlightened the audience with a TED-style talk – “Security and Privacy in the Cloud”. Merritt walked through the shift in mindset and operations that enterprises of all sizes and verticals should consider when moving to the cloud. She highlighted the “shared responsibility” model and that the process must be flexible and elastic. In addition, Merritt spoke about what is “ahead and what’s cool.” Among key insights were that with regard to privacy and security, policies must be encoded as logical formulas; tools that share information are built on fact and not opinion and that huge data sets are used to make the world better.

The last discussion, “The Future of Privacy and Breakthrough Technologies”, shined a spotlight on the fact that advances in technology — such as artificial intelligence to the human body acting as the computer interface — mean privacy will take on even greater significance. Kenesa Ahmad, Board Member and Co-Founder, Women in Security and Privacy led a team of experts including Brendon Lynch, Chief Privacy Officer, Microsoft; Kimberly Nevala, Strategic Advisor, SAS and Eva Velasquez, President and CEO, Identity Theft Resource Center to tackle the topic of how today’s actions and behaviors with impact tomorrow’s outcomes. The experts began with an interesting overview of artificial intelligence (AI) as it relates to real life examples including positive and negative impacts on healthcare and facial recognition. The talk then examined the unintended consequences of privacy like what technology “can” versus “should” do along with examples about “creepy” uses and privacy by design as a continuum. The panel concluded with insight on what would help to create a culture of privacy at organizations of varying sizes and industries.

Fifteen media guests representing 14 news outlets attended the event in addition 10 joined online. Here is a preliminary sample of media coverage resulting from the event.

• Larry Magid: Data Privacy Day, (Jan. 28, KCBS 106.9 FM San Francisco) https://kcbsradio.radio.com/media/audio-channel/larry-magid-data-privacy-day
• Magid: Safety event reaches out to underserved communities, (Jan. 31, The Mercury News)  https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/01/31/magid/
• Did you know? Monday was Data Privacy Day. Now it’s Tuesday. Back to business as usual! (Jan. 29, The Register) https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/01/29/data_privacy_day_comes_and_goes/
• 5 Ways to Increase Data Privacy Efforts, According to Top Chief Privacy Officers, (Jan. 29, Corporate Counsel) https://www.law.com/corpcounsel/2019/01/29/5-ways-to-increase-data-privacy-efforts-according-to-top-chief-privacy-officers/
• January 28 Is Data Privacy Day. The Remaining 364 Days Of The Year Are Data Privacy Days, (Jan. 24, ITSP Magazine) https://www.itspmagazine.com/itsp-chronicles/january-28-is-data-privacy-day-the-remaining-364-days-of-the-year-are-data-privacy-days
• Conversations At The Intersection Of IT Security And Society, (Jan. 30, ITSP Magazine) https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-unusual-gatherings/unusual-gathering-episode-xviii
• Data Privacy Day: Check Your Security Settings on Email, Facebook, & Google, (Jan. 28, The Inverse) https://www.inverse.com/article/52783-data-privacy-day-facebook-google-email
• Data Privacy Day Celebrates a New Era in Privacy (Jan. 28, Security Boulevard), https://securityboulevard.com/2019/01/data-privacy-day-celebrates-a-new-era-in-privacy/
• New privacy initiative, headed by ADT, to establish home security standards, best practices, (Jan 29, Security Systems News) http://www.securitysystemsnews.com/blog/new-privacy-initiative-headed-adt-establish-home-security-standards-best-practices
• Data Privacy Day 2019 Reminds Businesses and Consumers About the Value of Personal Data and the Need to Protect It, (Jan. 18, Aithority) https://aithority.com/technology/data-privacy-day-2019-reminds-businesses-and-consumers-about-the-value-of-personal-data-and-the-need-to-protect-it/
• Data Privacy Day is observance worth public attention, (Jan. 18, Sioux Falls Business) http://siouxfalls.business/data-privacy-day-is-observance-worth-public-attention/

Missed the event? Check out the full video here.

If you attended Data Privacy Day or watched online, take our brief survey to share your feedback on the Data Privacy Day 2019 event and suggestions for future Data Privacy Day efforts.

If you signed up as a Data Privacy Day Champion, we’d love to hear about your experience with the campaign through this survey.

Thank you to all who helped to make this event possible and tuned in online! We look forward to growing awareness of the importance of privacy and protecting personal information this Data Privacy Day and year-round.