Home > Security

Computerworld - Breach-notification laws and the growing globalization of business operations are forcing U.S. companies to pay more attention to ensuring the security of sensitive personal information under their control, according to Harriet Pearson, vice president of corporate affairs and chief privacy officer at IBM. In an interview with Computerworld, Pearson said that minimizing those risks is a challenge that requires a cross-functional effort involving security, technology, legal, auditing and marketing organizations.

What's driving the privacy agenda today? CIOs, security people and privacy people are now working closer than ever before. The precipitating event has been this requirement that started in California and has now appeared in about 25 states to disclose to consumers if there's a security incident that potentially compromises data about them. That simple thought [is] differently expressed in different laws, but [it's] now becoming pretty much standard operating procedure. [It] is very much on the minds of the security, privacy and CIO folks that I've been talking to.

What sort of challenge do these requirements pose for IT? Part of the challenge is that there are 25 states [with breach-notification laws]. If you look at each of them, you will see that each one is slightly or significantly different, and that does cause challenges. It creates the requirement that if you are doing business across states, you have to go through and try to rationalize them across states. So what kind of information is covered by the law that you have to comply with? There are different definitions of personal information across states. The triggers that require you to notify differ across states. And you have to figure out what the company is comfortable with using as a trigger.

What is your personal opinion of breach-notification triggers used today? I have an analogy that I use. In the 1980s and the 1990s, I was an environmental lawyer, and I was in California around that time when a law called Proposition 65 was passed. What happened was, California required businesses to make disclosures of the release of chemicals and stuff like that. When you are actually required to disclose those kinds of things, it changes people's behavior. But you want to be careful and strike a reasonable balance. I don't know exactly what the language should be. If it is too [restrictive], you are going to get too many warnings, and it's going to result in overnotification.

What makes a good privacy officer? Multidisciplinary thinking and attitude. Why do I say that? Because you have to work very closely with and understand the world of the CIO, the security officer, the risk and compliance function, legal, marketing, communications. So anyone who is disposed to think of business in a silo mentality need not apply.

Do corporate privacy officers get the recognition they deserve compared with security managers? It depends on the individual and the company strategy. I do think that when things change, it falls on leaders inside companies to lead the way. So instead of worrying about how much respect you get, I would turn it around, and my attitude and my advice would be [to] look at the challenges posed by a globalizing world, a world in which lots more data is under your management and where the expectation is that you are going to be very transparent about how you manage the information. Now, take those forces and be strategic in how you help your company meet its objectives. And I dare say you'll be respected, because every company probably wants, as part of its objectives, to deliver a consistently excellent experience.

Read more about Security in Computerworld's Security Topic Center.