As a long-term loyal and eager reader of the IAPP Europe Data Protection Digest, it is a real honour being the guest editor for this issue.

Over the last days I have been doing my homework digging into the news to find something “juicy” that would best fit this appointment and that could engage readers. It is not an easy task and all my appreciation goes to Rita Di Antonio, whose articles have always been able to lure the readers' attention.

The fact is that there is so much going on in that it is difficult to select just one topic. However, there is an underneath pattern that is common to all news I came across: It is about dealing with personal information. The fact that we live in an information-driven world and that personal information is a valuable business asset are generally accepted considerations, yet what we are observing now is that innovation—in terms of technology and general business process—and information governance are recognized as key factors of economic growth and competitiveness with the Internet, connected global networks and mobile devices acting as the great enablers. The privacy ecosystem, which I fondly refer to as the fantastic world of privacy, is a fluid and constantly changing environment that from a business perspective captures virtually all industry sectors and, as individuals, it has an inevitable impact on our lives.

There are a number of challenging items on the horizon. While Europe is somehow on hold waiting to understand the real destiny of the proposed new Regulation, it is a fact that in the rest of the world privacy is on the radar screen as a hot issue (think for example to recent developments and enforcement actions in the U.S. and new pieces of legislation in the APAC and Russia).

In a nutshell, we observe that a clear maturity curve is forming and that privacy and security represent for companies the new competitive battleground. As to security, just a mention is to be devoted to progress made in terms of standardization (ISO 27018 for cloud providers) and the boost of privacy seals and technical regulations.

A new trend is that of ethics: The right to data protection is somehow enlarging to capture ethics considerations and values, to the extent that in the Horizon 2020 framework research program of the European Commission there is always greater attention devoted to ethical matters considered as a crucial compound of the data protection legislative framework.

These are challenging times for privacy professionals, yet all that is happening is somehow inevitable, and we must admit that being part of it is fascinating and exciting.