CDP Institute

A bullish new Markets & Markets report forecasts rapid market growth. Key drivers are needs for: Discovery of structured and unstructured data Keeping pace with privacy regs Improving security compliance COVID-19 data management The pandemic has created strong pressure for businesses to address security concerns, add privacy protections and strategically respond to massive changes in the work environment.

Facebook’s competitor known for its privacy stance of not viewing its users’ posts has gained millions of viewers recently as mainstream platforms face heightened scrutiny. In context, MeWe reports 16 million users, while Facebook claims more than 1.8 billion.

Employee surveillance prompts $12.7M fine of German tech retailer Workplace surveillance is seen by regulators as a major violation and growing concern. A Lower Saxony Commissioner just set their highest fine in response to a German laptop retailer found to be recording videos of employees throughout their facility.

South Africa has raised privacy alarms with a new baby biometrics ID plan. Their proposed policy would collect detailed biometrics, such as photos of eyes, hands, feet, and possibly DNA data on every child born in the country. This would then be linked to parents’ ID numbers and used for all ID documents. Key concerns would be data misuse and the absence of individual consent.

The New York Times has reported that by purchasing sets of phone data from brokers, which includes both foreign and U.S. citizen information, the DIA may be circumventing a law meant to protect against digitally monitoring people’s movements.

UK ICO restarts investigation of adtech practices Concerned that high velocity ad data trading does not keep personal data secure, the UK is initiating audits focusing on digital market platforms. The use of Real Time Bidding (RTB) by data brokers potentially exposes massive amounts of data to hundreds of companies without clear protocols for retention or use and regulators want to ensure privacy is protected.

Employing a multi-layer approach, the cybersecurity system can now access data privacy information while checking data security to reduce risk of breaches.

Google closes Fitbit deal making commitment to protect user privacy and silo data Google has completed its acquisition of Fitbit, which has a community of 29 million active users. The announcement follows a year of negotiation that resulted in Google’s promises to safeguard consumer privacy, keep Fitbit user data separate and to not use the Fitbit data for Google advertising.

Users will not need to log into their Google account to use smart devices, so will not have their activity saved.

Toronto-based Nymi Inc., survey of more than 2,000 U.S. employees found that 77% would welcome using a wearable issued by their employer if it contributed to their health, safety and effectiveness. At the same time, more than half indicated that they would want their data to be kept private, and 44% had concerns that their company might not use their data responsibly.

Philippine President Duterte’s new directive sanctions ISPs for failure to stop proliferation of child pornography during COVID. Incident totals more than doubled from 19,000 in 2019 to 47,937 in 2020.

HERE adds consent manager and anonymizer for location data HERE Technologies, a global location data company with 9,000 employees across 56 countries, has added new digital privacy tools to provide more control and compliance in IoT devices for mapping, geolocation, telecom and retail.