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For those of you who may not be aware, Saturday, January 28th is the fourth annual Data Privacy Day, a day devoted to promoting best practices to help equip business and consumers to protect their online data and privacy. Comscore is delighted to be helping lead this effort as Data Privacy Day Champion.
In support of this critically important issue for our industry, I particularly enjoyed participating in the OnlineTrust Alliance panel at the Mid-America Club in Chicago this week along with three industry leaders: C. Steven Baker, Director of the Federal Trade Commission, Midwest Region; Chris Babel, CEO of TRUSTe; and John Roberson, Executive Director, Small Business Development & Resource Center, Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce. The panel was moderated by Craig Spiezle, Executive Director & President, Online Trust Alliance.
From Left to Right: Chris Babel, John Roberson, Craig Spiezle, C. Steven Baker, Gian Fulgoni
The panel focused on the importance of privacy and data protection for businesses large and small in the digital information age. Never has it been more important for any business to adhere to best practices and establish the proper procedures and protocols to prevent data incidents from occurring. In fact, I made the point during the panel discussion that I believe privacy and data protection should rank high on the priority list of every company CEO.
As a market research data and business analytics provider, Comscore has long recognized the importance of this philosophy. In fact, I wrote a blog post about this several years ago that you can read here. Comscore has invested substantial resources in making our data collection and privacy practices the best they can possibly be. Central to this effort is adhering to industry-accepted best practices regarding the collection and secure storage of the data collected by the software that our panelists provide us explicit permission to install.
The panel agreed that the vast majority of businesses want to get data privacy and protection right and do right by their customers. But to achieve this end, we must remain vigilant as a community, be proactive in our collective approach to these issues, and continue the education process so that businesses that are not adhering to best practices can get on board. It can take years for businesses to establish trust with their customers, yet erode that trust with a single incident of data loss, so taking proactive steps to ensure such issues never arise is vitally important in this day and age.
We thank the OTA for hosting this valuable event with us, and we look forward to continuing to champion the causes of data privacy and protection.